Kovalchuk L. Context and Contextuality in Modern English Fictional Discourse

This thesis focuses on the study of context and contextuality in modern English fictional discourse. Context is no longer considered as an objective phenomenon but as specific mental construct generated by interlocutors in the process of communicative interaction. Since the speaker and the listener have different representations of a communicative situation in their mental space, the formation and functioning of context is realized in terms of context models (speaker’s context model and listener’s context model). A context model is defined as a mental representation of relevant parameters of a communicative situation in the episodic memory of interlocutors which provides thematic coherence of communication. The two-level hierarchic structure of a context model presupposes simultaneous functioning and interaction of micro- and macro-context models on the local and global levels («context in context»). Decontextualization is studied as a linguo-cognitive operation aimed at topic generalization in the discourse on the basis of extrapolation from the sphere of a micro-context model on the local level to the sphere of a macro-context model on the global level represented by common socio-cultural knowledge of interlocutors. Lingual means of topic decontextualization comprise a great range of lexico-semantic, grammatical, syntactic and stylistic elements (indefinite article and indefinite prounouns, universal pronouns, inclusive pronoun we, adverbs always, never, everywhere, nowhere, verb forms of Present Indefinite, indefinite-personal sentences, metaphor, metonymy, simile, tautology, precedent phenomena).