1. modern linguistics as a change of paradigms

Lecture 23. Adresser and addressee factor
 
The addresser (author, sender, speaker) and the addressee (recipient, reader, listener) are the main constituents of discourse though explicitly they are not presented in the text. The addresser is a creator of the text, which reflects his views, attitudes, evaluation, world outlook. The addresser is realized in the text through the communicative aim, and strives to make it recognizable for the
addressee. Besides, he has an intention to exert a certain influence on the
addressee.
In literary communication, viz. in fiction, the addresser is represented in the
―author’s image‖.As many scholars state, the author of the literary work expresses not only the object of cognition, but also his personality. Literary communication
presupposes actualization of all spiritual and practical abilities of a personality, his
life experience and sophistication. The notion of the ―author’s image‖ was
introduced by V.V. Vinogradov who claimed that the ―author’s image is a focus,
which combines all the parts of the work into a unity. In the fictional text the author’s image may have an explicit expression, but more often it is implicit. There are many ways of expressing the author’s image, including the plot and composition. All the compositional forms of the author’s speech (description,
narration, reasoning) with different degrees of explicitness present the author’s individual viewpoint. One of the powerful means of asserting the author’s position
is a system of stylistically marked units employed in the text. Among them the role of imagery should be particularly emphasized. Indeed, image-bearing stylistic devices are used in the text to express evaluative, subjective attitude of the author towards the things described.
So, the factor of an addresser presupposes that cultural context including
literary, social, political data should be involved in discourse analysis. Only under
such circumstances can a satisfactory account of the text, and an adequate
interpretation of the author’s intention be achieved.
No less important in discourse analysis is the factor of an addressee. It is the
addressee who indirectly predetermines text construction, the choice of words and
structures. To achieve understanding the addresser should take into account all the
parameters of a potential addressee, his social and professional status, educational
level, background knowledge and so on. Certainly, the information about the ddressee is rather relative. There are texts oriented to a certain reader. For
instance, literature for children or special texts. At the same time there are texts not intended for a concrete reader, such as newspaper articles, brief news information, announcements and so on. In other words, texts of mass media communication. In contrast to such texts, literary communication might contain texts designed for an ―intelligent reader, who possesses enough background knowledge. Thus, the novel by J. Fowles ―The French Lieutenant’s Woman‖
requires the reader’s cultural competence and a certain educational level since it contains lots of quotations, allusions, references, philosophical meditations.
It should be noted that the factor of the addresser/ addressee in literary
discourse, unlike other types of discourse, is characterized by some peculiar
features conditioned by the fact that there are two types of the addresser:
―addresser – writer‖, and ―addresser – personage‖, and the two types of the addressee: ―addressee –reader‖ and ―addressee –personage‖. All this is indicative of a complex system of implicit relationships between the author and the reader, and a multifold communicative structure of literary discourse.