On the Problem of the Discourse Analysis of Literary Texts

Abstract

The essay addresses the key theoretical and practical aspects of the problem of scholarly approach to the analysis of artistic texts (films). The author aims to clarify the term "discourse" both with regard to its content, origin and scope and with regard to the possibilities and prospects of using it in analytical work with films. From the authors point of view, the discourse analysis can solve a complex of serious problems that inevitably arise in the work with artistic texts.
 Since in the work with film texts the discursive practices of analysis are rare, or even sporadic, and the very concept of discourse is still being adapted by Russian film theory, it is necessary to consider the term in more detail particularly, the conditions of its appearance in the humanitarian sphere and the prospects of its use in the artistic sphere and analytical work. The purpose of this essay is to summarize viewpoints which exist in the humanities regarding the term discourse and to formulate the understanding of the term which can be employed for the practical analysis within film studies.
 The term discourse is considered in the essay primarily in the linguistic tradition in particular, in connection with Ferdinand de Saussures dichotomy of language and speech; and then the author traces the gradual departure of the concept beyond linguistics into a broad sphere of semiotic activity. Modern semiotics, which grew up on the foundation of linguistics, has carried out the transfer of a number of linguistic categories such as language, speech, text, and discourse to other sign systems, regarding these categories as universal and basic among other things, as applicable to the sphere of art. The essay aims to clarify the subject of discourse analysis and its specificity in regard to other approaches, and to define a fundamentally new position of the researcher taken in the process of discourse analysis in relation to the artistic text.