Interpretation of literary

§11. Text Interpretation and Linguonpragmatics 
Linguostylistic analysis of the whole text (The chosen method of 
analysis embraces the text in its totality) makes it possible to reveal the 
structural-semantic organization of the imaginative text, the system of its 
tropes, the author's ways of expressing the emotional evaluation of life 
situations expressed in the text. As a result all this helps to reveal 
ideological and artistic message of a literary work. 
But only complex linguostylistic and linguopragmatic analysis will 
help thoroughly understand a literary work, to give a correct evaluation 
of its role in the life of society, to comprehend the factors determining 
the specificity of its artistic organization. 
Linguopragrnatics is an aspect in the research of language, stu-
dying its units in their relation to that person or persons, who use the 
language. That's why in linguopragmatic researches the main accent falls 
on the man — both speaking or writing (the speaker, the text's creater, 
the addresser) and listening or reading (the recipient, the addressee). 
In order to find the place of linguopragmatics in the interpretation 
of the text it is necessary to acquaint oneself with the main conceptions 
of linguopragmatics. 
Any kind of intercourse, including intercourse by means of a 
belles-lettres text, presupposes a certain communicative-pragmatic 
situation. A pragmatic situation is a complex of external conditions of 
intercourse which the speakers keep in mind at the moment of realizing 
their speech act: who?—to whom?—about what?—for what?—how? 
We distinguish the following parameters of a communicative-
pragmatic situation:
1. environment and place of a communicative act 
2. the subject of communication 
3. the purpose of communication 
4 the social status of the participants of communication (their class—
social, 
ideological 
characteristics); 
educational 
qualifications, 
background knowledge, race affinity etc. 
5. individual psychological characteristics of the communicants-(sex, 
age, national affinity, temperament etc). 
Pragmatic information reflects some or other parameters of the 
communicative-pragmatic situation and indicates which signs of the 
language system would be appropriate in the concrete conditions of 
communication. As an example we can use a tape-recorded scene of a 
morning greeting between the director of English language courses and a 

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Junior teacher (Oxford, the mid-eighties): "Good morning, sir!—
Morning, Chris!" The pragmatic orientation in the selection of precisely 
these language units, especially the diminutive form of the proper name 
is emphasized by another scene, that took place that very evening in the 
director's mansion. Introducing his three-year-old grandson, Mr.Kendly, 
reacting to the guests attempt to call the child by a diminutive name 
insistently underlined: "He-is Edward, not Eddy!" 
Signals of pragmatic information are divided into language and 
non-language ones. In the cited example the form of address serves as a 
language signal of social characteristics of the communicants, to non-
language signals we can refer the interpreter's knowledge of social role 
relations in modern English society. 
Each act of speech intercourse pursues a certain communicative 
aim. The problem of studying how the communicative act influences 
speech or non-speech conduct of the addressee also belongs to the 
sphere of linguopragmatics. Only then, when the addresser and 
addressee understand each other, communication, from the pragmatic 
point of view, is considered to have realized. Only taking into account 
the pragmatic impact, the speaker can make choice of language means 
and their combinatorics. 
Thus. Pragmatics of any text is one of its integral characteristic 
traits and that is determined by the very nature of the text as the main 
unit of communication. Thus, the process of communication alongside 
with the intellectual (factological, logical) function of the-language also 
realizes the emotional-evaluation and pragmatic functions, which is 
simultaneously directed from the man and to the man. It is precisely this 
process that manifests the social nature of the language and of the man 
as its user. 
The pragmatics of any type of the text includes the above stated 
parametres of the communicative-pragmatic situation: who?— what?—
to whom?—for what purpose?—how? In the process of literary 
communication these parametres are specified in the following way: 
— the agent of speech (the creator of a belles-lettres text, the 
author); 
— the subject of communication (fragment of objective 
reality
5
; passed through the individual perception of the agent of 
speech); 
—the addressee (the mass reader, the critic interpreter); 

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—the purpose of communication (the pragmatic orientation of the 
agent of speech); 
— the artistic organization of the text (its composition, the cha-
racter of imagery, the system of language and stylistic devices etc)
1
. 
Consequently the complex analysis of a text besides the main 
linguostylistic analysis also includes elements of linguopragmatic 
analysis: comprehension of the objective reality conditions in which the 
text was created, the personality of the author and the character of the 
addressee. In other words the linguopragmatic analysis requires studying 
the process of creating the text and its perception, i.e. it considers the 
text in the system of relations: reality-author-literary work-reader. 
Consideration of the speech agent category begins as a rule from 
the comprehension of the social-historic reality in the conditions of 
which the text was being created. The literary production is considered 
to be a part of complex social process and the aggregate of ideological-
social, national, literary and personal circumstances of creating a 
belles-lettres text is denoted by the general term "cultural context". It is 
the context of the singular concrete situation of creating the text that
manifests the character of the author's attitude to objective reality and 
the factual material, which circumstance finds its reflection in the so 
called pragmatic orientation of the text and its architectonics. The notion 
of the agent of speech is also socially determined. The social 
determination of the speech agent finds its particularly distinctive 
expression in the texts of belles-lettres style. And really" the individual 
peculiarities of the writer, his style are in many respects determined by 
the norms of speech usage adopted in the given language collective at 
the given stage of historical development. 
The basic foundation of any imaginative work — the artistic 
imagery in the broad understanding of this term is also socially 
determined, because, as philosophers contend, associative thinking is a 
purely social ability, acquired in the process of mastering the world. The 
system of principles for aesthetic evaluation is also based on moral, 
political, utilitarian-practical and other relations. The same principles 
make the foundation of the philosophical theory of social values-
axiology. The same refers to. the sphere of emotional notions, the social 
aspect of which is defined by P.V.Simonov in the following way: 
emotions are the system of social estimates, which, leaving aside 
many other properties of the subject, gives a preliminary answer to the 
question: "Is the object useful or harmful?" 

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Although the creator of an imaginative production unquestiobly 
represents an artistic personality, his personality is formed and in many 
aspects determined by concrete social relations. At the same time a man, 
naturally, possesses his individual idiosyncrasies, which are determined 
both by social and purely biological factors (national affinity, sex, age 
etc). It is as a result of dialectical unity of general and singular that the 
artistic personality is moulding itself. 
Specificity of the subject of literary communication is immediately 
connected with the peculiarities of an imaginative text which were 
described above. They are: associative imagery, emotional activity, 
subjectiveness, double-planed content, aesthetic character of the belles-
lettres text. If the creator of a scientific text proves the verity of his ideas 
by logical reasoning, the creator of a literary text shows "the truth of 
life" by opposing the beautiful and the ugly. Correspondingly, the 
subject of literary communication can be defined as reflection of real 
world in the ideal world of aesthetic reality, as a fragment of reality 
passed through the "I
1
; of the speech agent and addressed to the recipient 
of information, 
And indeed the deep-laid idea of an imaginative work is expressed 
through the author's aesthetic evaluation, in other words, the very idea 
has aesthetic character and expresses the author's life position. At the 
same time it is not declared by the author straightforwardly, but it is 
asserted by inner logic of the production's total structure. The pragmatic 
orientation of the text is targeting g literary text at a definite, 
programmed by the author impact upon the addressecreader. In case of 
an imaginative production this impact is of purely aesthetic character: 
the author is striving to affect the reader's emotions, to make the reader 
experience identical feelings and in this way to urge him to share his 
own thoughts. 
The pragmatic orientation reveals itself through the character of the 
textual information, which I.R.Galperin defines as a kind of 'information 
"which communicates to the reader the author's individual understanding 
of relations between occurences ... and their significance in social, 
economic and political life of people
1
. 
We distinguish three main levels of realizing the pragmatic 
orientation of the text: scheme, composition, style. And really the text of 
any type can be considered to be a result of some succession in the acts 
of choice at different levels of its engendering: at the level of the initial 
scheme, i.e. the choice of ideas and themes; at the level of structural-

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semantic organization of the text, i.e. the choice of the definite order in 
the consecution of themes and ideas; and at the level of the verbal style 
— the choice of language forms, expressive means, their combinatorics 
and so on. All these facts of choice are unquestionally interdependent— 
they form an organized
1 
hierarchic system which embodies the 
pragmatic orientation of the text. 
Thus, the intention of a speech agent is formed as a kind of 
scheme. Scheme is a content-and-sense formation, which is taking shape 
on the basis of the creative comprehension of that fragment of reality, 
which becomes the subject of communication. In other words scheme is 
a manner of representing the subject of communication. 
The character of the author's scheme is pragmatic by its very 
assence, which in fact is connected with the nature of any type of artistic 
production, in the process of whose creation it is possible to observe two 
opposing and at the same time intersecting tendencies: reflection, and 
consequently, to a certain degree replicating reality and striving to its 
transformation. At the same time, even simple "replication" of reality,