DEVIATIONS OF NARRATION SUBJECT ORGANIZATION IN THE COGNITIVE-DISCURSIVE ASPECT


2019. № 1 (19), 106-112

Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod

Abstract:

The paper develops the cognitive-discursive theory of the narrative proposed in the author’s recent studies. This study treats some «strangeness» in text realization of «the author’s image» which indicates extremely complicated organization of this category that is, in turn, rooted in some substantial peculiarities of the natural language and in rich potentials of discursive actualization of a number of its basic patterns and models. As we look closely at deployment of narrative structure responsible for narration subject organization in prose literary text, we can detect some deviations which can be fixed only against the background of our everyday knowledge of a certain «prototypical narrative» in native speakers’ cultural consciousness, i. e. some general narration principles taking place in common speech and perceived intuitively by a narration addressee — a reader. It is a play on «imperceptible» shift of Narrator’s types or a Narrator and a character, on change of focus and empathy, on transformation of «viewpoints», subject perspective of narration, etc. The relevant example of a whole «cluster» of all kinds of deviations in the aspect of narration subject organization is the beginning of the famous J.D. Salinger’s short story «A Perfect Day for Bananafish» translated by R. Rait-Kovaleva. Here we can see a play on shift of an omniscient Narrator and a pragmatically motivated Narrator. A play on shift of the Narrator’s subject sphere and the hero’s one within the limits of one sentence (anomalous inclusion of the hero’s speech in the Narrator’s speech), on change of foreground and background in narration, on reciprocal shifts of a distant Narrator and a direct Observer can be found is in some fragments from A.S. Pushkin’s «The Queen of Spades», in a number of A.P. Chekhov’s texts et al. The conclusion is made that all deviations of this kind, when numerous narration subject plans are combined in one sentence, from the point of view of discourse’s esthetic effectiveness, are not, strictly speaking, anomalies, but, on the other hand, one of the most powerful techniques in narration organization.