State educational standards at universities aim future teachers of literature on a comprehensive text analysis. There are many examples of the need for such a procedure. Indeed, in the totality of sciences that study the culture of a people through language and literary creation, philology cannot be dispensed with, since only it can serve as a means of textual competence, and the essence of such a specialist is twofold - it is Russian language and literature. Philology itself was born in the process of studying texts and to this day is a unified branch of knowledge about them.
Analysis: two directions
These directions are quite autonomous and consider texts from a completely different angle of view - literary and linguistic. The first case studies the genre affiliation of a work, its theme, idea, figurative system, composition and the specifics of the chronotope. In the second, the text is examined from the point of view of the language: its artistic means, paths (epithets, metaphors), unfortunately, often without any connection with the content and without understanding the functions, only as decorations that help the author to express himself more clearly. Even stranger is the level analysis of the text by schoolchildren and students, from which the integrity of the work and its aesthetic perception are destroyed, and just a comprehensive analysis of the text kills all artistry.
Example: "The poem has a fine intonational, syntactic and sound structure in the size of a five-foot iamba, where the stress falls on all the 2nd, 4th, 6th and 10th syllables, after every fourth there is a clear long pause." The same goes on: vocabulary, phonetics, morphology, stylistic moments, syntax ... And all this is about the wonderful and touching poem "I loved you." What will remain in the soul after such an analysis, will the soul cool down for poetry? That is why a harmonious combination of linguistic, literary and cultural-historical is necessary in that which involves a philological complex analysis of the text. An example of interpretation should lead to reflection, produce a certain result. First, a deeply subjective impression is obtained after reading, then the impression is transformed into understanding and approximation to the author's message. This is where the real knowledge is. If, in addition to the iambic, knowledge did not increase, this whole wise comprehensive analysis of the text was in vain. An example of failure to achieve a goal is no more.
Form and content
The theory of philological analysis is characterized by the inextricable dialectic unity of content and form in an artistic text, interdependence, conceptual and aesthetic justification. The analysis of a literary text moves from content to form, materializing it, revealing it. From a different perspective, research can also lead to an understanding of the content from the form explicating it. The first way can be dangerous by decoding the content and too much of the subjectivity invested in the analysis, since the text seeks confirmation of one's own guesses, and the language and its means only illustrate what is contrived. From form to content - a more rational way. Epithets, metaphors and other paths will be discovered during the movement: why certain words are chosen, how they are connected, which constructions and grammatical forms are preferred, how semantics focus the reader’s attention - and how it all fits into the plan. So crystallizes the author’s thought, his attitude. Only form can turn content into essence. Pushkin's "I Loved You" can be clothed in a different form, and then the magic will disappear.
This approach significantly increases the lexical and semantic components of the literary text. Usually this is considered generally fragmentary: “Define the subject of the text,” “Where and how are paths formed in the text?”, “Where does the author allow deviations from common language norms and why?” and so on. And this leads to the fact that the fabric of the text is torn, the objective givenness, the main material is collapsing, and in this case a complete, deep and holistic analysis does not provide an understanding of the author’s text. But if instead of “define the subject of the text” ask for definitions of semantic composition, the process would go in a single stream, without breaks. The definition of a lyrical theme is a rather big difficulty, if one does not take into account in the analysis, for example, a poem of only its inherent nuances. Emphasis is not shifted if semantic chains are revealed that generate relations and connections, under which another, new, “underwater” meaning is incremented. Attention to semantics adds transparency to the text, which contributes to the depth of reflection.
At school
For schoolchildren, the concept of text analysis should be formulated briefly, succinctly and in essence, analysis should be primarily meaningful, aimed at understanding, in a sense - "step by step". Work with any text should be conducted competently, whether it is a fiction or a journalistic text. All kinds of texts literally haunt a modern person, especially a student: advertising on the street and on the TV screen, radio, newspapers, magazines, essays, reports, scientific texts and fiction, even SMS or comments written on forums on the Internet. There is an influx of information texts of extraordinary power, and therefore, first of all, you need to learn to choose from this sea only the most valuable, beautiful and tasty. A journalistic text today makes up a huge percentage of the total information mass, and its comprehensive analysis is therefore extremely important.
For students on this path, not only the skills to determine the form and language means are important, but first of all the aesthetic value of the text. To do this, in the classroom, students study mostly classic patterns, draw up a text analysis plan, explain the origins of expressiveness and imagery, and then compose a similar text of their own composition - by analogy, thus enriching the vocabulary, mastering various styles of speech for a variety of life situations. In addition, it becomes clear the need to study phonetics, grammar, morphemic and all other sections of language science for the ability to convey your thoughts and understand someone else's. Work with schoolchildren is carried out in stages, at the end of each section a creative test is conducted by an essay or a project. The main thing on this path is to help the student find the search paths, for which special text research techniques have been developed. Getting used to a certain - high - form of communication, students learn to listen, formulate questions and clearly answer.
How to make a text analysis plan
When analyzing the text, it is considered at various levels, their order can be completely freely varied and set by the specifics of this particular case. But in any case, it is necessary to navigate in the main features of the text, types of speech and its styles. To do this, it is proposed to first determine the following parameters.
- Type of speech of the given text.
- A composition indicating the number of semantic parts and microthemes in them.
- The nature of the connection in the text is a parallel or chain connection.
- By what means are grammatical and lexical connections made?
- The speech style of the text is journalistic, popular science, official business, artistic, conversational, which is used by the author of the text.
- The subject of the text and by what language means its unity is ensured.
- The main idea (idea) of the text.
Stylistic and genre features
A scientific text differs from others in its presentation logic, generalization, abstractness, accuracy of definitions, and presentation logic. A slightly different popular science text. An example can be found in any scientific journal, where this or that idea or discovery is conveyed to a wide range of readers, which means that the text should be interesting and easy to read. And here, collaborating with the scientific either journalistic or artistic style. Journalistic is accessible, passionate, invoked, emotional, valued, figurative and logical. The literary text is highly imaginative and widely uses the means of the language - graphic and expressive. The character of the official business text is not personal, proper, prescriptive, with precise formulations, standardized, built stereotypically. The spoken text shows unofficiality and ease, repeats the oral form of communication with unprepared speech.
The scientific text is found in collections and journals, encyclopedias, dictionaries, monographs, dissertations. Two genres are combined in a popular science text, an example can be found in any journal devoted to space, technology, and information technology. The accuracy and logic of a scientific presentation is most often joined up by a journalistic one with its accessibility and imagery. A journalistic text is characteristic of a problem essay, where a problem of social significance is raised and ways to solve this problem are analyzed, it is a portrait essay, which reveals the identity of a certain person, a travel essay with sketches of nature, life, travel impressions, it can be a newspaper article or article. The literary text is presented in various genres - a lyric poem, a story, a parable, these can be fragments of a novel or a story. We will find the official business text in applications, memos and explanatory notes, autobiographies, powers of attorney, statements. Below, the difference between these styles will be shown in more detail.
Means of expressiveness of style
The following factors are a characteristic feature of a style in a scientific text: words are used only in one sense, they are neutral, common, general scientific (like analogy, details, energy, etc.), the keywords of the text are often repeated, figurative means are absent. A journalistic text is primarily a socio-political vocabulary, which denotes the concepts of morality, medicine, ethics, psychology, economics and so on. Also, journalism abounds in means of influencing human emotions - syntactic parallels, epithets, comparisons, lexical repetitions, gradations, sayings and proverbs, literary quotes, humor, satire, irony, and so on.
Literary texts are written in high poetic style. Book vocabulary triumphs here, where not only the figures of speech in the text are used, the artistic style saturates it with vernaculars, dialecticisms, professional and business lines borrowed from the journalistic style, synonyms, paronyms, antonyms, Old Orthodox and archaisms, neologisms. The official-business style is distinguished by standard turnovers, special terminology, stable phrases with a lack of emotional content.
Means of expressiveness of morphology
The scientific style is dominated by nouns, often of a secondary gender (education, property), verbal nouns, and verbs are in the meaning of generalized or abstract (the problem is, leads to a common denominator and the like), the form of the imperfect form of verbs is widely used, not used ambiguous words in the text, but many third person pronouns. The journalistic text contains many imperative and reflexive verbs, nouns in the genitive are often used as inconsistent definitions (foreign countries, the voice of the world, and so on).
The literary text is rich in verbs for intensity and dynamism of action, verblessness is used, the infinitive and timeless character is given by the presence of infinitives, a huge number of participles for a figurative description of an object and its signs in dynamics, case categories are used to increase expression (with a creative one - picturesque, for example: to sing Nightingale) uses short adjectives, indefinite pronouns for distant events, and personal and possessive ones for transmitting waves vannosti or sincerity. The official business style uses other methods of building text. It does not allow the form of verbs and personal pronouns of the first and second persons, and in the third person they sound in an indefinite meaning. Collective nouns are used, codes and charters contain imperfective verbs, and perfect ones in protocols.
Syntax Expression Tools
In a scientific text, the word order is direct, there are a lot of impersonal sentences and indefinitely personal ones, there are a lot of complex sentences, the participial and participial phrases are often used, phrases are widely used in the genitive case, and the noun plus the noun. In a journalistic text, the beginning and end of the text are often connected by one semantic thread, homogeneous members, introductory words and sentences, participial and participial phrases, and often complex sentences are used. The title of the text also means a lot here.
The official-business style gives the text uniqueness due to complicated simple sentences with separate turns and homogeneous members. A literary text can contain sentences, interrogative, exclamatory, and narrative, they can be complete and incomplete, one-part and many-part. Here, complete freedom of choice of means of visualization and expressiveness.
Artwork Analysis
The analysis is best carried out according to a certain plan in order to fully reveal the message of the author in this work.
- It’s very convenient to start with the history of creation.
- Along the way, bring to the information regarding the emergence of topics, ideas. From here you can begin to analyze the problems.
- Next is the plotting and composition.
- Genre affiliation.
- Heroes are the main and secondary, their main roles.
- Language features: vocabulary, phonetics, morphology, syntax.
- Visual and expressive means, their role and method of application.
- Size, rhythm and stanza, if it's a poem.
- The work as a whole and its role in world and Russian literature.
- Mandatory own assessment.
Acting according to plan is the right decision, especially if the goal is to teach schoolchildren to understand an artwork in its aesthetic, semantic and moral unity.
In high school
Philology students are closely engaged in linguistics, and therefore a comprehensive analysis of the text is not a problem for them. It is more difficult to make a linguistic commentary that will help prepare a philological analysis. The objects of analysis for linguists may not be literary texts, they can be in any genres and styles. The task of linguistic analysis of non-fiction texts is, among many other things, the study of a linguistic organization, since this is the form of expression of the content of a work. All levels of linguistic means are in sight - syntactic, morphological, lexical, and phonetic.
Of course, the student’s attention should focus mainly on considering the most pragmatic and semantic means of the language, and, of course, the lexical ones are fundamental, since words in any text play a special role in the development of semantic meaning. Students who are familiar with the independent implementation of linguistic analysis of texts know that first of all they need to consistently answer the following questions.
- What is this text about, what is its theme?
- Is there a problem in this text, one or several? Transfer.
- How does the author solve the problem posed, how does he answer his questions, what is his position?
- What stylistic and linguistic techniques does the author use to express his own position and attitude to the problem?
- What is the student’s personal attitude to the problem posed by the author, is the position different from the author?
Language Tools
The analyzed texts can contain all kinds of linguistic means, including lexical, morphological, syntactic, phonetic and further down the list. However, the main need to dwell in more detail.
- Lexical means: the use of synonyms and antonyms, contextual words in a figurative meaning, phraseological units, brightly colored vocabulary - figuratively or emotionally, stylistically colored vocabulary - high, book or low, colloquial, Slavicism, archaisms and the like. It is also necessary to mention the presence of tropes - epithets, comparisons, metaphors, metonyms, synecdoh, hyperbole, litas, personifications, irony, since each tropic is functional in its own way and their role is huge.
- In phonetics, the most important is alliteration and assonance (repetitions of vowels and consonants).
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- Syntax and syntactic figures are a huge field for choosing expressive means. This is both the structure of the proposals and their size. The structure distinguishes between simple and complex sentences, with the presence of secondary members, their functions, and so on. The following syntactic figures can be found: repetitions or accents on the same word, epiphora and anaphora, syntax parallels, joints - the same word or expression at the end of the phrase and at the beginning of the next, repetition of prepositions and conjunctions at least and repetition of entire syntactic constructions at the maximum , gradation - strengthening or weakening of semantic or emotional significance in the process of deliberate grouping of words or entire constructions, inversion - an unusual word order in a sentence, antithesis - a sharp contrast Nij or concepts, a rhetorical question or exclamation - does not require an answer, but an emotion intensifies.
Afterword
Analyzing a work of art, a student, in principle, answers only two questions: "What?" and “How?”, where the first is not only the theme of the work with all its problems, but also its place in the literary and historical context. But the second question concerns the entire art system, it is akin to the organic art world, all parts of which live thanks to the whole and get strength from there.
A deep independent analysis of literary texts is perceived as a sign system, with the help of which we create our own interpretations and experience real pleasure from the perception and vision of the ways that helped to create this literary text. To analyze the master’s word is more fun than the game, and therefore it is much easier to teach a younger student who will not stop playing until the end of his life.