Interpretation of literary

FOREGROUNDING

It is the actualization of potential possibilities of the language. It is realized with the help of phonetic, lexical, syntactical S.D. and the convergence of S.D. (the concentration of S.D. in a relatively short text span).
It is also typical of key words and thematic words (some repeated words which become symbolic. For example: "rain" — the symbol of unhappiness; "lion"—the symbol of courage).

ROLE OF THE TITLE IN REVEALING CONCEPTUAL INFORMATION OF THE TEXT

The title has great importance for revealing conceptual infor-
mation. Sometimes in explicit and concrete form, sometimes in veiled and implicit form, the title expresses the scheme, idea, concept incarnated by the author in the text.
In the course of plot development, the words chosen by the author for the title, begin to acquire some additional, connotative shades of meaning, extend their semantic structure. Sometimes the meaning of a title is veiled by a metaphor or mctonomy. According to their form and content-conceptual or content-factual information, refleced in them, titles can be classified as: 1) a title — symbol, 2) a title —thesis, 3) a title —quotation, 4) a title —report, 5) a title — hint, 6) a title — narration.

TEXT INTERPRETATION AND LINGUOPRAGMATICS

Linguopragmatics is an aspect of the research of language, stu- dying its units in their relation to that person or persons who use the language. Any Kind of intercourse presupposes a certain communicative-pragmatic situation (CPS): a complex of external con- ditions of intercourse which the speakers keep in mind at the moment of realizing their speech act.
In the process of literary communication the parametres of the CPS are specified in the following way:
— cultural context (a complex of ideological, social, national,
literary and personal circumstances of creating a speech production);

• 
  the agent of speech (addresser, the author);
  

-the subject of communication (fragment of objective reality, passed through the individual perception of the author);

• 
  the addressee (the mass reader, the critic interpreter);
  
• 
  the purpose of communication (the pragmatic orientation of the agent of speech);
  
• 
  the artistic organization of the text (its composition, the character of imagery, the system of stylistic devices etc.
  

Pragmatic information (PI) reflects some nr other parametres of the CPS; signals of, PI are divided into language and non-language.
Each act of speech intercourse pursues a certain communicative aim. Only then, when the addresser and addressee understand each other, communication, from the pragmatic point of view, is considered to have realized. In other words the linguopragmatic analysis requires studying the process of creating the text and the perception, i.e. it considers the text in the system of relations: reality— author—literary work—reader.
BRIEF INSTRUCTIONS FOR SEMINARS 1. Methods and Ways of Interpretation
Interpretation of a belles-lettres work comprises the following three stages: 1. Preparatory stage. 2. Main stage. 3. Conclusive stage.
The preparatory stage requires the readers' acquaintance with the author's literary career and the cultural context. The knowledge of the historical situation and the concrete circumstance of the creation of the literary text will help the reader to see the author's pragmatic task, i.e. the purpose of his book. The author's biography, an outline of his previous works, the information about his world outlook, his social sympathies, his aesthetic credo etc. will prepare the reader for understanding ambiguous and obscure places in the text and for comprehending the book's message.
The main stage deals with the belles-lettres text itself and com- prises two steps; Step A and Step B.

Step A presupposes reading the imaginative production for the

• 
  sake of its content-factual information, i.e. the plot of the novel or story and the roles of its main personages. Simultaneously the reader acquaints himself with the vertical context, i.e. the commentary to the text, explaining quotations from world classics, allusions and elucidating different proper and geographic names and historic facts. If the book is not supplied with a commentary, the reader can consult an encyclopaedia or other reference-books. Since this step deals with the text taken in its wholeness it is also convenient now to analyse its structure (with two kinds of segmentation: context — variativc and volume-pragmatic traditional arrangement of text components), its
  

composition (with all elements of the plot), its completeness and to a certain extent its integration.
Step B deals with the linguoustylistic analysis of the text, com- prising the following aspects: a) systematization of key-words and thematic words with subsequent inferences from their usage; b) decoding all lexical, syntactic and phonetic stylistic devices and other cases of foregrounding; c) selection of poetic details and commenting on their language capacity.
The conclusive stage is supposed to provide a final formulation of the Content-Conceptual Information based on the analyses of the modality of the text, its impliciteness, the role of the title and its pragmatics. It will be revealed in the process of discussion among the recipients of the book (the students guided by their teacher).
The scheme of interpretation given below can help to organize the process of interpretation at the seminars with students. It is recommended that all students should be thoroughly acquiaintcd with the scheme. For this purpose it is advisable to read and trans-Hate all items of the scheme in the auditorium at the introductory lesson under the teacher's guidance.
For discussion at the lesson the teacher can use those items from the scheme which arc more significant for the chosen literary text.

2.