Abstract
The purpose of the article is to analyze the peculiarities of the perception and understanding of Sonnets written by W. Shakespeare by the students of the Faculty of Foreign Languages.
 The methods of the research are: in order to study the features of perception and understanding of the absurd in the sonnets of W. Shakespeare we used the method of associative experiment. In our research we examined the dependence of the latent period of awareness of the absurd meaning of speech acts, depending on the nature of stimulation. For comparing we proposed to students high-frequency phrases, emotionally colored ones (chosen from the sonnets of W. Shakespeare), low-frequency statements, stylistically colored phrases, statements which include slang.
 The results of the research. At the end of the procedure of the experiment, a total of 1958 verbal responses of the students were received. From them, 897 reactions are for high frequency phrases; 458 – for emotionally colored ones; 293 are for low frequency phrases; 256 – for stylistically colored ones and only 54 reactions are for slang. At the stage of the analysis of the results we arranged the groups of words depending on statistical differences in the average time of the associative reaction for each group in order from the smallest one to the largest group: 1) high-frequency and emotionally colored; 2) stylistically colored: 3) low-frequency; 4) phrases with slang.
 Conclusions. It was proved that students adequately perceived and understood the emotionally colored phrases that were selected by us from W. Shakespeare’s sonnets and contained explicit and implicit absurd meaning. This gives us reason to argue that these statements, with their expressive context and absurd content, in a great degree attracted students that they perceived these phrases as personally significant, experienced them in such a way that they already entered their sphere of personally significant experience.
Highlights
The problem of the perception and understanding of novels, plays, sonnets and poetry in general isn’t new in scientific literature
Shakespeare, we have identified the psycholinguistic mechanisms of expressing the absurd meaning by the writer
The presentation by the author literary denouement with the absurdly displaced center. It should be noted, above all, that the understanding of the absurdity arises as a result of the transforming the tense context of the work into quite obvious semantic frames
Summary
The problem of the perception and understanding of novels, plays, sonnets and poetry in general isn’t new in scientific literature. Shakespeare, a lot of researchers (Shportun, 2018; Stockwell, 2002) emphasized, that they were more difficult for understanding, first of all, because of details of absurd and nonsense in their structure. In his comedies, as a rule, we find only one thing among comedic collisions, where events develop with dramatic acuteness («Much Ado About Nothing», «A Midsummer Night’s Dream»); at the same time, comedic situations and comic characters are often used in tragedies, and some tragedies to a certain place develop under the laws of comedic conflict («Romeo and Juliet»). The presentation by the author literary denouement with the absurdly displaced center It should be noted, above all, that the understanding of the absurdity arises as a result of the transforming the tense context of the work into quite obvious semantic frames. Pavlychko: На честь фальшиву, на дівочу вроду Поганьблену, на зраду в пишноті, На правду, що підлоті навдогоду В бруд обертає почуття святі, І на мистецтво під п’ятою влади, І на талант під наглядом шпика, І на порядність, що безбожно краде, І на добро, що в зла за служника! (Shakespeare, 1986: 788)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
