Communicative phenomenon of the old Ukrainian miracle play “Oleksiy, the man of God”

Abstract

The subject of this research focuses on the communicative and pragmatic structure of dramatic texts of the 17–18th centuries. The aim of this article is to analyse the miracle play “Oleksiy, the Man of God” (Alexius, the Man of God) as a communicative act. The method of semantic-stylistic analysis was used to elicit the semantic and stylistic peculiarities of the language means and patterns of their use. Context and situational analysis, as well as interpretative analysis, were used to identify textual elements with additional pragmatic meaning; the analysis of actual material was conducted in line with the principle of historicism, i.e. taking into account the correspondence of the linguistic and lingual stylistic system of the texts to the time of their creation. The Results of the Study. The dramatic text holds a specific place in the system of artistic communication, since it stands as a meaningful reproduction of the communicative process. A key feature of any dramatic text is dramatis personae that are put at the beginning of the play and who, as a rule, can be related to real people in real situations. The old Ukrainian baroque drama mainly takes the forms of drama mystery play and miracle play. The character system in “Oleksiy, the Man of God” reflects the social structure of society at that time, and the characters’ speech correlates with the speech of real people and stands as its textual embodiment. The process of author’s describing the real picture of the world is the main author’s intention, which coincides with the illocution in the dramatic text. The article analyses the communicative past and communicative future of certain characters. The analysis concentrates on the stylistic means used by the author to enhance the impact on the addressee and create the intended communicative effect, in particular wordplay techniques. The role of extratextual elements that help decode the author’s idea and achieve a perlocutionary effect has been determined. The prospects for further research include studying pragmatic and stylistic function of the phenomenon of variability of the speech genres in old Ukrainian texts of the 17–18th centuries.