The scientific research provides a comprehensive analysis of the linguostylistic and linguosemiotic features of the image-symbol Labyrinth based on James Dashner’s antiutopian novels “The Maze Runner” (2009), “The Scorching Trials” (2010) and “The Death Cure” (2011). The research aims to identify the core linguostylistic and linguosemiotic means of constructing the image-symbol Labyrinth in contemporary American dystopian novels. The obtained research results indicate the scientific novelty of the dissertation. For the first time, the image-symbol Labyrinth is modeled and explained through the prism of linguostylistic and linguosemiotic means within the scope of antiutopian texts. The hierarchical structure of conceptual metaphors that implicate the image-symbol Labyrinth is characterized for the first time. The rhetorical and stylistic techniques, together with expressive and figurative means, in particular allusions, author’s neologisms, conceptual metaphors, rhetorical questions, and expansionary and reductionary syntactic constructions, are identified, determined their role in the development of the image-symbol Labyrinth in James Dashner’s antiutopian novels. For the first time, the interpretation of the symbolic meaning of the image-symbol Labyrinth is explicated by reconstructing possible textual worlds that reveal the most imminent nuances of the image-symbol Labyrinth in the analyzed texts. For the first time, the methodological foundations of the interparadigmatic theoretical and methodological approach to analyzing the imagesymbol Labyrinth are supplemented and expanded by the corpus linguistics tool, which the researcher has developed. The tool’s metrics are based on the grammatical and lexical features of texts of different genres and lengths. Each algorithm counts the total number of tokens (words) that meet a particular linguistic rule. As a result, we obtain statistical data for each evaluated metric,
which makes it possible to trace the frequency of specific linguistic and stylistic means that are salient for the imagesymbol Labyrinth.
It has been determined that the image-symbol Labyrinth is a complex mental formation that unfolds in the texts of modern American antiutopiannovels and conveys the highest degree of imagery. The image-symbol Labyrinth has a unique developmental structure. At the first level, the image-symbol Labyrinth is instantiated by lexical and stylistic means such as the author’s occasionalisms, conceptual metaphors, and syntactic means, including rhetorical questions and extensive and reductive constructions. At the second level, the image-symbol Labyrinth actualizes implicit, subtextual information embodied in the antiutopian texts through allusions to the plots of famous myths and fairy tales. At the third level, the image-symbol is a sign that verbalizes an abstract idea that acquires additional meanings through the techniques of sound
symbolism, synesthesia, and the nuances of the graphic designation of the labyrinth in the studied novels.
