Article

Name: Poetics of Emotive Prose: In Search of Hidden Senses

Authors: E. G. Beliaevskaya

Moscow State Linguistic University

Abstract: It is well known that literary works of high artistic value tend to leave their readers with a whole range of impressions which cannot be attributes to the plot or figures of speech. Sources of such emotive and intellectual impact are often difficult to account for if one is guided only by the adopted mode of discourse analysis. Proceeding from R. Jacobson’s conception of poetics of emotive prose as the unity of sense and sound the paper sets out to show that frame semantics might prove to be instrumental in the study of linguistic mechanisms producing additional, and, possibly, otherwise obscure, senses in discourse. The investigation presented concentrates on cognitive structures representing knowledge of sound as part of the knowledge of the world. Two types of frames are considered. First, there are frames standing for fragments of reality where sound constitutes the periphery of the frame structure representing information accompanying an event. Such frames underlie the ‘story’ forming the plot of a text of fiction. The significance of sound in this case lies in the fact that the mention of sound alone helps to restore the rest of the frame in the reader’s mind thus evoking an all round picture of what is described. Besides, sound effects contribute to imagery creating mood and atmosphere. Second, the study of hidden sound frames might give an insight into “the way the author’s voice sounds” that is into the author’s manner of telling a tale. The frames of the second type refer to metadiscourse, i.e. the part of discourse organizing the presentation of the ‘story’ to the reader. Sound effects of the second type are imitative in nature and depend on the language the text is written in. In English one of the most common patterns is a regular succession of long and short vowels in an utterance. The pattern is illustrated by examples taken from ‘Cat in the Rain’ by E. Hemingway where a patterned alternation of monosyllabic words with short and long vowels or diphthongs is used to create the impression of the sound of raindrops rattling on the ground. In the Russian language text of emotive prose metadiscursive sound effects stem mainly from the use of syllabic structures. The investigation revealed that ascending arrangement of words consisting of two, three, four, and five syllables as well as corresponding descending arrangement is frequently used in M. Bulgakov’s story of Pontius Pilate in “Master and Margaret”, thus distinguishing it from the rest of the text. This rhythmic device is quite common in Russian poetry, and one might conclude that it is one of the elements performing the poetic function in emotive prose. The paper points at the study of quantitative frames in emotive prose as a perspective of further research since quantitative information (numerals) are part of numerous frames representing knowledge of time, action, and events of the world.

Keywords: emotive prose, poetic function, frames, sound frames, syllabic structures, comparative studies

Bibliography:

Bradbury R. Dandelion Wine. London, Panther, 1977, 192 p.

Bulgakov M. Master i Margarita [Master and Margarita]. In: Mikhail Bulgakov. Romany [Mikhail Bulgakov. Novels]. Leningrad, Khudozhestvennaya literatura Publ., 1978, p. 423–812. (in Russ.)

Carter R. Style and Interpretation in Hemingway’s ‘Cat in the Rain’. In: Carter R. (ed.). Language and Literature: An Introductory Reader in Stylistics. London, George Allen & Unwin, 1982, p. 64–80.

Hailey A. The Moneychangers. New York, Pan Books, 1975, 476 p.

Ivanov Vyach. Vs. Lingvisticheskij put’ Romana Yakobsona [The linguistic pathway of Roman Jacobson]. In: Roman Yakobson. Izbrannye raboty [Roman Jacobson. Selected works]. Moscow, Progress Publ., 1985, p. 5–29. (in Russ.)

Jacobson R. Retrospektivnyj obzor rabot po teorii stikha [Retrospective review of works on the theory of verse]. In: Roman Yakobson. Izbrannye raboty [Roman Jacobson. Selected works]. Moscow, Progress Publ., 1985, p. 239–267. (in Russ.)

Jacobson R. Zvuk i znachenie [Sound and meaning]. In: Roman Yakobson. Izbrannye raboty [Roman Jacobson. Selected works]. Moscow, Progress Publ., 1985, p. 30–91. (in Russ.)

Minsky M. A framework for representing knowledge. In: Frame conceptions and text understanding. B., 1980, p. 1–25.