Izotova N. Ludic Stylistics of Contemporary English Fictional Narrativefrom a Linguistic Perspective: A Study of J.M. Coetzee’s Novels

This thesis focuses on the study of ludic stylistics of English fictional narrative viewed from a linguistic perspective. Ludic stylistics is defined as an artistic phenomenon manifested in literary text through various linguistic means which, both individually or jointly, tend to createsingular or multiple ludic effects. Ludic stylistics of Coetzee’s novels reveals itself via two facets – text- and sense-making. The former elucidates the specificity of ludic text-formation, considered as a dynamic process of text unfolding aimed at transforming narrative patterns through narrative gaming. Such transformations presuppose alterations of conventional genre-bound literary patterns, which results in the violation of their structural characteristics to developnew narrative variations.Ludic sense-making is viewed as a dynamic process of construing new, emergent textual sensescaused by"dissolution"(V. Turner’s term) of canonical or conventional sense-formingpatterns. Ludic sense-making highlightstransformations of textual structures that have not been fully dissolved or formed in the course of ludic text-formation. The thesis elaborates the notion of ludic context viewed both as a tool of ludic stylistic analysis and the format of its manifestation in literary text. Such a type of context integrates signals of a narrative game(s) as well as respective ludic devices. It is also characterizedby structural and semantic tension, dynamic nature, liminal modality, and non-additivityof textual sensescaused by narrative gaming.