Interpretation of literary

2. Scheme of Interpretation 
 1. Say a few words about the author and the cultural context. 
2. Give the factual information of the text, that is, briefly relate the 
plot of the story. 
3. Speak on the pragmatic characteristics of the main personages. 
Extract additional implicit information from the individual speech habits 
of the characters concerning their educational qualifications, social 
status, age, origin (foreign or native), emotional state at the moment of 
speech and kind of general disposition (gay, sad, kind, cruel, restrained 
uncontrollable, self-confident, timid etc.), their property status, 
geographic locality etc., etc. 
4. Characterize the composition of the story and its architectonics 
(proportional relations of the parts of the text). Point out in what way the 
composition deviates from the traditional model-'exposition, prologue; 
beginning of the plot (initial collision) development of the plot; climax; 
denouement; end; epilogue and what advantages result from it. 
5. Comment on the category of time and locale of action. It the 
events in the story are related not in their chronological order and the 

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locale is changed in the text, what retrospective analysis will you make 
to find the consistency of episodes, that is to trace the realization of the 
category of time and space in the text? 
6. Comment on volume-pragmatic and context-variative segmen-
tation of the text (the shape of prose: narration, description, com-
mentary, dialogue, non-personal (represented) speech, autodialogue, 
stream of consciousness, monologue.). 
7. Comment on the means of cohesion between separate syntactical 
wholes. Is it established through traditional lexical and grammatical 
signals or with the help of associations and logical conclusions? 
8. Comment on the categories of wholeness in the text. What 
facts and missing links is it necessary [or the reader to conjecture in 
retrospective analysis in order to establish the sequence of events and 
the motives of actions, which will secure the continuity of the text?
How should the reader accentuate different moments in the text in 
order to establish their mutual interrelation and synthesize all separate 
elements of the literary work into one united integrated text?
9. Characterize the category of modality in the text concentrating 
on the addressee's way of evaluation: Is the story told in the name of the 
author, or one of the personages, or an on-looker, eyewitness? Is the 
narrator's attitude explicit or hidden? How does the choice of words 
reveal the author's attitude? Is his attitude passionate or neutral? Docs he 
avoid straight-forward evaluations and characterize his personages only 
through the depiction of their actions or does he characterize them 
directly? 
10. Comment on the category of the implicitness. Find the main 
implicates of the text: 1) an implicit title; 2) implication of precedence; 
3) implicit details. Say which of them play an important role in revealing 
conceptual information of the text.  
 11. Reveal the conceptual information of the text (the idea of the 
story and substantiate it by picking out from the text: 
a) poetic- details depicting details, characterological details, '" 
authenticity details, implication details-and extract their subcurrent
information; b)stylistic. devices and comment on their functions in 
revealing 
the 
author's message and supplementing superlinear
information, c) draw conclusions from the linguistic approach to the 
text. Comment on the degree of richness of the author's vocabulary: the 
usage of borrowings, foreign words, colloquialisms, vulgarisms, 
scientific words, neologisms. Is the author experimenting with] the 

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language? What unusual word combinations and nonce word? has he 
coined? 
Find thematic and key words. Reveal the role of stylistically 
marked words and words charged with emotive meaning. Trace cases of 
repetition of the same word. Does frequent repetition of a word make it 
symbolic? 
d) comment on the meaning of the title and connect it with the 
conceptual information. 
The suggested scheme includes nearly all possible characteristics 
relevant for text interpretation. It must be noted that each concrete text 
requires specific approach and some items may prove optional in its 
analysis.