Communication levels in lyrical and poetic discourse

Abstract

The article presents a concept of poetic text analysis from the perspective of speech act theory which distinguishes not two (as recognized in communicative pragmatic studies), but three levels of communication in lyrical and poetic discourse. These types are: 1) aesthetic communication; 2) external/vertical communication “author – reader” which appears as is or as "author – protagonist" or "protagonist – reader"; 3) internal/horizontal communication "character 1 – character 2". Being primary in poetic text, aesthetic communication is based on self-reference and the author’s aesthetic intention, whereas vertical and horizontal communications rely on reference per se and the author's referential intention. Thus, poetic text simultaneously realizes two speech acts – a poetic one (self-referential) and a general one (referential). Referential intention determines the speaker’s attitude towards the given content, and the aesthetic one – towards the word form used to convey this content. Poetic speech act is a subtype of expressive illocutionary act and introduces realization of the aesthetic intention which is seen in the author's illocutionary goal – to express true positive emotional evaluative attitude towards the word form being created, as well as the perlocutionary goal of affecting the reader's aesthetic feelings regarding the word form. Being interdependent and -related, the author’s referential and aesthetic intentions are reflected both at the level of utterance and text. The suggested concept is developed on examples of linguistic pragmatic interpretation of "New objectivity" poetry texts by M. Kaléko, E. Kästner and J. Ringelnatz.