Zhygadlo O. Paradoxical Utterances in English Literary Discourse: Cognitive and Pragmatic Aspects.

The dissertation focuses on the study of paradoxical utterances as elements of literary discourse that possess specific cognitive and pragmatic peculiarities. Following the principles of conceptual integration theory and conversational analysis, distinctive features of paradoxical utterances have been revealed and the cognitive mechanism of their formation as well as specificity of their functioning in English literary discourse have been found out. It has been proved that the paradoxical utterance is a semantic and pragmatic anomaly formed by means of antinomy, which consists in the deliberate combination of two opposite statements regarding one object. The thesis provides a classification of paradoxical utterances in English literary discourse according to the kinds of antinomy, internal or external. Using the technique of mental spaces reconstruction, a typology of cognitive models which underlie the formation of paradoxical utterances in English literary discourse has been elaborated. Two basic varieties of such models have been established in the analysed discourse.