PRAGMATIC PROPERTIES OF AUTHOR’S DIGRESSION IN ENGLISH LITERARY PROSE

Abstract

This article focuses on revealing syntactic and pragmatic properties of author’s digression in English literary prose of the XIX–XX centuries. Author’s digression is determined as an autosemantic compositional unit of literary text, which ensures semantic rela tionship of different elements of the text, performs emotional and esthetic, phatic and cognitive functions, and is considered to be explicit means in defining the author’s and reader’s images. The research was conducted in line with the latest achievements of text linguistics, aimed at identifying the communicative and pragmatic features of the text and the linguocognitive characteristics of the author’s speech, which is realized in textual elements. As compositional units of the text, the author’s digressions highlight the author’s attitude to the events depicted in the work and determine the pragmatic influence on the addressee. The linguopragmatic approach made it possible to determine the pragmatic types of utterances that are part of the author’s digressions (constatives, performatives, directives, quesitives). It is proved that a significant number of constatives in the author’s digressions testify to the author’s image as a profoundly conscious linguistic personality. The addresser acts as a regulator of the formation of the reader’s view, his behavior in a given situation, so the second position is occupied by directives. The addresser tries to evoke the speech act of the addressee and get the relevant information from the addressee to his question with the help of quesitives. However, such intention is not so often observed in the texts. And the last position in this rating is occupied by performatives. With such statements, the addresser encourages the addressee to take action, regulates interpersonal relationships. But since performatives are characterized by functioning in the context of direct com munication, their presence in the analyzed author’s digressions was not so frequent.