Categories of the literary text. Informativity of the text

CATEGORIES OF THE LITERARY TEXT. INFORMATIVITY OF THE TEXT.

• Lecture 2

Plan

• 1.General notes on the categories of the text.
• 2. Informativity of the text.
• 3. Kinds of information: content – factual, content – conceptual and content – subtextual information.

Categories of the text

• The main categories of the text are : informativity, modality, implicitness, segmentation, composition and wholeness of the text.

Informativity

• is the main category of the text, its ability to convey information, i.e. certain meaningful contents. The concept of information embraces a number of problems overstepping the limits of purely linguistic research. One of them is the problem of the new (the unknown). It is quite obvious, that the new can't be subjected to consideration without taking into account social, psy­chological, scientific, cultural, age, time and other factors.

KINDS OF INFORMATION

• In written texts of different functional styles according to Prof. I. R. Galperin1 it is expedient to distinguish the following kinds of information:
• a) content-factual (CFI), b) content-conceptual (CCI), c) content-subtextual or implicit,(CSI)

Content-factual information

• contains reports about facts, events, processes which took place, or are taking place or 'will take place in the surrounding world, real or imaginary.

Content-conceptual information

• conveys to the -reader the aut­hor's individual understanding of the relations described by means of CFI, his understanding of the cause and effect connections, their significance in the social, economic, political and cultural life of the people, including the relations between separate individuals, and their complex psychological, aesthetic and cognitive interaction.

Content-subtextual information

• is not explicit by its nature; it is not expressed in the verbal layer of the text. It is a kind of sub-current concealed information that can be derived from CFI thanks to the ability of the language units to engender associative and connotative meanings as well as thanks to the ability of sentences united into syntactical wholes to convey increment of sense.

• The factual information doesn't require any efforts for its gras­ping, it is in the surface layer of the text and accessible in the first reading. The CFI is explicit by its nature, i.e. it is always expressed verbally. The language signs are usually used in their direct logical meanings established by the social experience. This kind of information acquaints the reader with the plot of the book, its personages, their collisions and different accompanying events.

Answer the questions

•  1. What categories of the text can be distinguished?
• 2. What is informativity of the text?
• 3. What kinds of information are distinguished by prof. I.R.Galperin?
• 4. What is the content-factual information of the text?
• 5. What does content-conceptual information convey to the reader?
• 6. What does content-sub textual or implicit information convey to the reader?
• 7. Describe the category of modality.
• 8. What can you tell about the segmentation of the text?
• 9. What is the implicit and explicit?
• 10.What information doesn’t require any efforts?
• 11. What kind of information expresses the author’s attitude towards the utterance?
• 12. What kinds of information require efforts and serious work for comprehension?
• 13. What scholars investigated the questions of subtext?
• 14. Give I.R.Galperin’s definition of subtext.

Glossary

• Glossary: recipient, therefore, functional, styles, complex, psychological, aesthetic, cognitive, interaction, verbal, layer, subcurrent, informational, phenomenon, an embodiment, thesaurus, implied, things, acquaints, aesthetic-artistic.

THANK YOU FOR ATTENTION!