Psychological Mechanisms of Understanding Contemporary Texts of American Writers

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to define the style of the novel as complex and multi-layered process, and to propose psychological mechanisms of understanding contemporary texts of American writers. The following theoretical methods of the research were used to solve the tasks formulated in the article: a categorical method, structural and functional methods, the methods of the analysis, systematization, modeling, generalization. The results of the research. The degree of closeness of such a secondary text to the source will depend on many factors – the level of human understanding of the source text, the expectations and attitudes of the reader, the level of reader’s interests, reading goals and so on. The understanding of the text will include its division into relatively independent attitude in terms of actual content passages (text elements) with their subsequent regrouping in order to separate the main and the secondary context, the establishment of a hierarchy of meanings. Conclusions. There were proposed psychological mechanisms of understanding contemporary texts of American writers. The first one is the mechanism of Decentralization: keeping in the minds of the reader of two contradictory ideas at the same time and while maintaining the ability to act, analyzing novels, creating their own stories, solving situations; overcoming personal egocentric manifestations; show tolerant, impartial attitude to the opinions and statements of communication partners; the transformation of the meaning of images, concepts, ideas, taking into account the author’s own emotional and cognitive positions, points of view, actions, lifestyle of others; change of views and positions of the reader by comparison of own point of view with representations and positions of other people and others. The next one is the mechanism of Empathy: taking into account the nature of independently selected novels (romantic, realistic, philosophical ones) for psychological analysis; recognition of mental states of people depicted in novels (a plot, a portrait, music, painting, psycho-artistic situations); determination of emotional states of characters of novels, communication partners, congruence of behavior in non-standard-stimulating situations or situations of cognitive dissonance. And the third mechanism is the mechanism of Reflection: the implementation of the relationships of the elements of a novel into a constructive system; substantiation of one’s own attitude to a certain situation, its participants, identification of personal and situational determinants of the behavior of the subjects of this situation (including if these subjects are the author and the heroes of the novel).