Французький мовний субстрат в англомовному мемуарному дискурсі Володимира Набокова: стилістична гра чи текстотвірна закономірність?

Abstract

The paper deals with the memoirs discourse which is regarded as a separate type of discourse whose nature is specified by the «memory factor». In order to investigate the role of «memory factor» in memoirs text-formation the author analyses one of the most famous case in memoirs practice of XX century — Vladimir Nabokov’s «Speak, Memory» (1966). This third version of Nabokovian memoirs written in English is fulfilled with numerous French and Russian insertions which provoke the discussion on multilingualism and code-switching, a topical issue in the modern study of Nabokov’s verbal practice and his text-forming techniques. The major object of analysis in the paper concerns French lexical and syntactical units which form as a whole a certain substratum in the repertoire of the multilinguistic means represented in this text. The description of the French substratum concluding various units (words, word combinations, phrases, quotations, phraseological units, sentences) with different functions in the sentence allowed to identify 8 types. They were interpreted according to the memoirs text-formation model proposed in the earlier publications of the author, and the analysis showed that almost all French insertions represent the substructure of Nabokov’s text which is determined by the «memory factor». Most of these nominative means in their functioning in the text contain the reference to some significant situation, event, or picture of the past and in their verbal images they are conceptualized by the memoirist as an inalienable part of the referential situation. The study of the data also proves that the use of French insertions in this memoirs text is nothing to do with the ludic aspect of text-formation, with linguistic games which are often considered as a constant of Nabokov’s works.