Referentiality of event in postmodern fictional discourse: pragmatics and semantics

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of postmodern fictional discourse referentialism in terms of pragmatics and semantics. Postmodern fictional discourse eliminates the oppositions of different narrative perspectives, which entails a non-distinction of the author’s narrative and the characters’ speech. The relevance of the article arises from the need to identify the communicative parameters of the creator of fictional discourse and its recipient from the standpoint of the cognitive and discursive linguistic paradigm, but it should be noted that both sides of fictional communication are free in the choice and interpretation of language elements outside the fixed conventional meanings. This feature of fictional discourse results in a set of conventions adopted by both sides of aesthetic communication. Metaphorically polysemantic images, which conflict with the definitions of formal logic and affirm the variability of the world and consciousness, are characteristic of postmodern fictional discourse. Pastiche, irony, collage, allusions, citations, direct derivations have significant pragmatic potential. The aim of the article is to identify and describe the pragmatic and semantic features of structuring the referentiality of an event in postmodern fictional discourse on the material of Sasha Sokolov’s novel “School for Fools”. The semantic space of the novel creates the dialogicity of the characters’ consciousness, pragmatically marked by dialogization of speech, which emphasizes the recipient’s attention to the imaginary event. The text fragments become independent discursive phenomena, thus contributing to the perception of the novel as a complex of macrocontexts. Markers of narrative polyphony, as well as intertextuality and precedent phenomena serve as pragmatic markers of the special referentiality of an event in S. Sokolov’s novel.