Fictional Texts Research Articles

" Irrémédiables étrangers ": Lifelong Trajectories of Exile in the Late Works of Linda Lê

Abstract: This article examines the lifelong trajectories of exile in Lê's late works, Lame de fond (2012) and Je ne répondrai plus de rien (2021). Departing from a critical tendency to focus on the exilic identities of the young female protagonists that featured most prominently in Lê's early works, this article analyses Lê's contemplation of exile as a long-term condition in her late works. It concludes by drawing a parallel between these fictional texts and Lê's own lifelong, non-fictional construction of a 'lettered republic' of exiled, transient, and isolated writers that culminates in De personne je ne fus le contemporain (2022).

Critical literacy in the PISA 2018 reading literacy assessment

This study examined which aspects of critical literacy are focused on in the reading literacy assessment for the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 and what kinds of texts are related to the critical literacy items in the test. Based on theory-oriented qualitative content analysis, critical literacy items in PISA represented, for example, determining the purpose of a text or separating fact and opinion. Most of the items were related to genre approaches to critical literacy, yet they ignored social justice aspects. Furthermore, the test consisted mostly of informational texts and only a few fictional texts. The findings indicate a need to develop a more comprehensive critical literacy assessment tool.

Story Comprehension Skills in School-Aged Children According to Text Type and Story Modality

Objectives: This study aimed to examine school-aged children’s story comprehension skills according to text type and story modalities.Methods: A total of 348 elementary school children from grades 1 to 6 participated in this study. Participants answered the story comprehension questions after performing the story comprehension task according to the three- story modalities. One child read two fictional and one nonfictional texts, or two nonfictional and one fictional texts, and were randomly assigned according to text type and story modality. Story comprehension questions consisted of both factual and inference questions.Results: A significant difference was found in story comprehension performance according to the grade, text type, and story modality. As children get older, the performance of a story comprehension task increased significantly. Regarding the text type, the comprehension of fiction was significantly higher than the nonfiction comprehension. Comparing the story comprehension performance task according to the story modality, the performance was high in the order of reading-while-listening, listening, and reading. In fiction, there was a significant difference between listening and reading modality, whereas no significant difference was found between text modalities in nonfiction.Conclusion: The findings suggest that presenting text as a complex form of listening and reading to schoolaged children can aid in information processing and help children improve their story comprehension. Also, children’s age and text type need to be considerd for assessment and interventions aimed at children’s successful story comprehension.

COHESION AND COHERENCE IN THE CONTEXT RELATIONS

Background. Context is the essential tool to connect the sentences in the text. The formalization of the context relations has been well considered for cohesion. However, the role of coherence in the context relations requires its studying. Since both kinds of the linkage participate in the forming the context relations there is a need to develop a system of analysis of context which considers both categories of textuality. There is in pragmatics different approaches to examine contexts. In the article is given a short analysis of the minimalists and contextualists approaches. It is shown that contextualists approach fits more for the text analysis.
 Materials and methods. The research material comprises fragments of fiction and non-fiction texts containing clearly manifested context relations. Methods used – discourse analysis, classification.
 Purpose. To establish specificity of the cohesive and coherence connections between the sentences linked by means of the context relations.
 Results. Contextual relations are defined as relations between base of the context and the context. Base of context are context sensitive expressions and parts of sentence obtained context sensitivity in some conditions. The selected texts illustrate that context relations are manifested to a greater or lesser extent depending on context sensitivity of the base of context. A pattern has been revealed that the importance of coherence increases as the level of the context sensitivity while reducing the level of the context sensitivity or vice versa.

Semantic Extensions of Hausa Visual and Auditory Perception Verbs gani and ji in Romance Fiction

This study focuses on the metaphorical semantic extension of Hausa visual and auditory perception verbs as portrayed in romance fiction. Hausa language, just like any other language, provides a window into how speakers use language to make sense of the world around them. The study examines how language users attribute abstract concepts, such as thinking and understanding, to sensory experiences of seeing and hearing, drawing on the conceptual metaphor theory. The study analysed a corpus of Hausa romance fiction, focusing on the use of perception verbs and the metaphorical extensions they evoke. A qualitative research approach was employed, and literary texts were selected as the primary data source. The text data were extracted using the AntConc programme, and such data were then analysed using a cognitive semantics analytical framework. The study’s findings indicated that verbs of higher intellect, such as “understand” and “think”, are derived from hearing and vision, respectively. These metaphorical extensions are closely related to cultural beliefs and norms, emphasising the importance of visual and auditory cues in human relationships. This article provides insights into how language and culture intersect in using perception verbs in Hausa romance fiction texts and demonstrates the importance of understanding metaphorical extensions in studying language and culture.

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF DIGITAL STORYTELLING-BASED HAND PUPPET MEDIA FOR ELEMENTARY SCHOOL STUDENTS

This study aims to develop digital storytelling-based hand puppet media developed with the ASSURE model, learning Indonesian language material on observing characters in fictional texts in elementary schools, seeing responses, improving skills, and understanding of students. The subjects of this study were fourth grade students of SDN Susukan 06, totaling 23 students in the 2023 school year. Data were collected using tests, questionnaires, interviews, observations, documentation, and field notes. The results of the study are (1) obtained the average score of expert validation with a percentage of 95% with the category "very feasible" (2) the average score of learner responses with a percentage of 93.67% which is included in the "very suitable" category (3) the average posttest score which has increased by 82.17 with the category "very good" so that it can be concluded that digital storytelling-based hand puppet media is feasible to use in the material of looking at characters in fictional texts for grade IV Indonesian language learning and can improve students' skills in telling stories as well as understanding to grade IV students in the material of looking at characters in fictional texts.

Perbandingan kompetensi literal dan apresiatif siswa kelas iv sd dalam memahami isi teks fiksi

<strong><em>Abstract</em></strong><em>. Understanding the content of reading text is one of the language skills included in reading skills. This study aims to describe the ability of fourth grade students in understanding the contents of fictional texts in terms of Barrett's taxonomy theory, developed by focusing on literal comprehension and appreciation comprehension. This research is a descriptive qualitative research. The subjects in this study were fourth grade students and fourth grade teachers at Soropadan Elementary School. The data collection used in this research was observation, tests, interviews with fourth grade students and fourth grade teachers, and document studies. The data analysis technique in this study used the interactive data analysis technique of the Miles and Huberman model. Data validity testing technique uses source and technique triangulation. The results of this study show that the percentage obtained on the literal understanding comprehension is 91.35% and 35.79% on the appreciation comprehension. The results of the study show that students perform better in literal comprehension than in appreciation comprehension.</em>

Issues of understanding a literary text from a psycholinguistic perspective

The article describes psycholinguistic methods used to model the processes of modern schoolchildren’s perception and comprehension of the text of A. P. Chekhov’s short story "The Death of a Government Clerk". We postulate that the processes of perceiving and understanding fictional texts are conditioned by several factors. These include the quality of the text itself, its size, the closeness of the work to recipients, recipients’ gender- and age-specific qualities, and the peculiarities of their conceptual systems. The research data are the results of two-stage psycholinguistic experiments conducted with the participation of Omsk secondary and vocational school students. The first stage was performed according to the method of semantic differential. It aimed to diagnose the process of emotional perception in the experimental subjects. In the second stage, the students had to answer questions concerning the basic semantic lines of the text. The first stage revealed an emotional attitude to the text and the influence of the gender factor. The former was manifested in different intensities of the evaluation parameters concentrated in the area of negative coefficients. The second stage showed the results of the comprehension process as the totality of gender-, socially, and psychologically determined interpretations of the semantic content of the text. The comprehension process is associated with choosing certain supports such as particular textual signs, the socio-psychological model of the author, the plot, and others.

“There was much new to grok”: an analysis of word coinage in science fiction literature

Abstract As can be witnessed in projects such as The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction (Prucher, Jeff. 2007. Brave new words: The Oxford dictionary of science fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press), science fiction has been fertile ground for the creation of new words and concepts. Whereas the aforementioned dictionary was constructed by eliciting examples and citations from volunteers, this paper presents an initial foray into data-driven methods for uncovering lexis unique to science fiction. Words unique to science fiction texts are extracted by comparing a science fiction corpus against the British National Corpus (BNC Consortium. 2007. The British National Corpus, XML edition. Oxford Text Archive. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12024/2554 (accessed 29 June 2022)) to produce a list of 306 neologisms from 74 texts. In addition, this study seeks to examine the ways in which authors impart the meaning of such words to the reader, drawing on frameworks of semantic word relations and work in cognitive linguistics. This reveals the use of definitions and glosses by the authors, both in narration and direct speech, co-occurrence with synonyms, and the drip-feeding of attributes pertaining to the concept being referenced. In addition, characters can be shown to struggle with the concepts to which neologisms refer, allowing authors to explore themes of alienation and other-worldliness.

Lexico-stylistic features of the expression of indignation in a fiction and its film version: comparative analysis

The subject of the study is the lexical means of expressing indignation. The object of the study is statements with the intention of indignation. The theoretical basis of the study is the idea of perturbation as an integral part of conflict communication. The study reveals the most general patterns of changes in statements with the intention of indignation during the screening of fiction. The analysis is carried out in the comparative aspect of the statements of the characters of the literary work with the statements of the characters of the film adaptation of the literary work. The author examines in detail such aspects of the topic as lexical changes in the text of a work of fiction during its film adaptation. Special attention is paid to the reasons for changing the literary text in its screen version. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that for the first time a comparative analysis of statements with the intention of indignation is carried out, the analysis is carried out in comparison of the text of fiction with its film adaptation. The following transformations were identified: verbatim preservation of lexical composition, omission of lexical units, addition of lexical units and their replacement. The main conclusions of the study are the reasons for the identified transformations, which are due to the desire of the creators of the film adaptation to have a greater emotional impact on the audience - for this reason, the characters of the film adaptation are more emotional in expressing their feelings and experiences, their statements are more categorical, and there is more speech aggression in the film adaptation. Transformations occur due to changes in the details of the content of situations. Finally, the film adaptation has more features peculiar to oral colloquial speech: there is more colloquial vocabulary in the film adaptation, and the characters speak more briefly, since this is due to the general tendency of oral colloquial speech to save speech resources.

THE ASSOCIATIVE BACKGROUND OF CLASSICAL GUSTATES

After the launch of the associative qualification project of the national gustatory fund, the proposed study conducted an associative experiment, where the stimuli were Ukrainian gustators extracted from works of Ukrainian classical literature. This made it possible to identify important components of Ukrainian culinary culture in their psycholinguistic interpretation, to illustrate the current associative background of vocabulary for food and drink, to reveal the uniqueness of linguamental features of Ukrainians in the gustatory focus of perception of modern respondents. The purpose of our study is to experimentally establish the associative background of classical Ukrainian gustators. The formulated goal was to perform the following tasks: to isolate basic gustatory markers from the contexts of Ukrainian literature; to conduct a FAE on the material of recorded gustatives; to characterise the obtained reaction words according to the frequency criteria; on the basis of the obtained characteristics, to find out the associative background of gustatives and its possible intersections with the linguamental features of Ukrainians and the specifics of Ukrainian gastronomic culture. The object of the article is gustatory markers in their psycholinguistic interpretation. The subject of the study is the obtained associations to gustatory stimuli. The source material of our research is the texts of the Ukrainian fiction works «Eneyida» by I. P. Kotliarevskyi and «The Kaydashev Family» by I. Nechuy-Levytskyi, and the actual material is the 5 most frequent gustators: borsch, braga, bublik, varenukha, vino. The analysis of the texts «Eneyida» and «The Kaydashev Family» has given grounds to speak about the relevance of gustatory vocabulary in these works and its important role in the creation of the national sign. These gustates gave grounds to establish their associative background, to reveal the dynamics of priorities in association (core/peripheral) and the connections between stimuli-gustates and reactions in the structure of the respondents’ internal lexicon (paradigmatic/syntagmatic), which in general illustrates the linguamental features of Ukrainians and their cultural specificity at the level of food-flavour interpretations.

Wer die worheit gerne mynn / Und sich güter dinge versynn, / Der müsz der besten einre sin

Abstract Lutwin’s late 13th century account of the lives and deaths of the protoplasts and their first descendants, ‘Eva und Adam’, employs traits and literary techniques usually associated with vernacular courtly literature to convey its religious message to an audience of German speaking nobility. Such techniques include the amplification of the source material by adding newly invented sequences to the narrative’s plot as well as a highly self-conscious narrator, reflecting on his role as a mediator of divine revelations while, at the same time, openly exhibiting his ability to orchestrate the events and characters within his narrative. For decades, the scientific community has been split over the question whether these features may present evidence that contemporaries might have viewed the majority of courtly epics and romance as purely fictional. However, considering the religious nature of Lutwin’s themes and statements, it seems unlikely to assume that a medieval audience had to actively suspend their disbelief in order to accept courtly adaptations of biblical stories. Applying the modern dichotomy between factuality and fictionality therefore leads us to regard Lutwin’s ‘Eva und Adam’ as a paradoxical text riddled with inconsistencies. The concept of ‘fideales Erzählen’, recently introduced by Elke Koch, provides an alternative and potentially more adequate means of describing the historical modes of conceiving and perceiving premodern religious literature. Accordingly, instead of empirical verifiability being the main criteria in determining the status of factual or fictional texts respectively, faith, divine inspiration and adherence to common orthodoxy could, in the notion of a medieval audience, enable authors to present truthful insights into otherwise unattainable religious truths. Based on Koch’s deliberations, this paper re-evaluates several aspects of Lutwin’s ‘Eva und Adam’ – most notably the conception of its narrator – which in the past would have been considered as traits of fictional literature. It can be shown that, although Lutwin acts as a conscious arranger of his narration, his account’s proclaimed verisimilitude remains unchallenged.

Функциональное назначение имени собственного личного в выражении номинативно-предикативного аспекта в художественной диктеме (на материале английской художественной литературы)

The aim of the research is to describe the functional features and categorical differences of personal proper names (anthroponyms) in the construction of the nominative-predicative aspect of the literary dictema. The scientific novelty of the paper lies in the identification of the structural-textual functions of personal proper names in relation to their etymological meaning, as well as in the extended examination of the organisation of the nominative and predicative aspects of the dictema. The investigation of linguistic units within the semantic field of the dictema is conducted using authentic texts of English fiction. The paper discusses the functional features of a personal proper name as an informative and significant unit of text that serves to establish semantic connections in the seminal aspects of speech within the literary dictema. Within the framework of the dictemic approach to the study of personal proper names, typical groups of anthroponyms have been identified, which form a specific kind of nominative-predicative centre in relation to the given mental trajectory of objective reality. As a result, the research shows that the appellative bases of anthroponyms are capable not only of denoting events, which allows associating this phenomenon with the nominative part of the dictema, but also of participating in the construction of the predicative aspect, i.e., indicating the reality and unreality of actions in the author’s imagined world and directly in the interpretation of the reader.

Christian Motives in Selected Works with Homosexual Themes in Czech Literature

The main aim of the paper is to highlight the relationship between Christianity and homosexuality based on selected fiction texts by Czech writers and poets (Zeyer, Fuks, Kuběna, Georgiev). The selected authors represent different historical periods and different currents of opinion. We are convinced that the theoretical part provides a suitable methodological basis for the part of the paper in which we discuss homosexual motives in selected works of the mentioned authors. To sum up, we can state that the explicit expression of homoerotic and other motives is only relevant today; in artistic narratives dating back to the 19th and 20th centuries, these symbols are expressed in a hidden way, and it is up to each recipient to decide whether and to what extent they see them in these narratives. Zeyer could not fully express himself; he was forced to use hidden symbols to be who he felt he was, at least in his works. Kuběna, in the context of the 1970s, treats the topic of homosexuality very openly, he is not afraid of being condemned by society. Fuks´ works are characterized by a considerable degree of autobiography. Despite Georgiev´s clear rejection of faith, a believing homosexual appears more than once in his work. In this paper we try to fill a certain gap in the field of comparative research in works of art and poems by authors who in some way tended to homosexuality because within the Czech context, we have encountered this area of scholarly articles sporadically.

The Concept of Motherhood in a Modern Fiction Text (Mother's Time by G. Sosiashvili)

The Concept of Motherhood in a Modern Fiction Text (Mother's Time by G. Sosiashvili)

A Comparative Analysis of Emotional-Expressive Potential of Oriental Allegorical Writing

The present paper is aimed at revealing the major emotional-expressive peculiarities in the translation of a stylized text of fiction into the English language. Unlike previous linguopoetic studies, the authors offer a comparative analysis of emotional-expressive connotations in “The Prophet” by K. Gibran with the core Sufi imagery (in translations from Arabic and Persian) analysing different types of emotions through specific lexical units transferring an emotional state. For the purposes of the data analysis, it was suggested to expand the traditional Ekman’s classification of the most common types of emotions. Thus, in this paper, various shades of basic positive emotion types were considered. The study shows new prospects for future research and concludes with linguistic implications for translators and comparativists.

Foreign readers’ learning strategies for studying Ivan Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov” and Ivan Bunin’s poem “The Hollow Water is Raging …”

The article deals with innovative methods of working with text in the process of studying Russian literature by international students. We present an integrative structure of working with text in Russian as a foreign language, which includes not only a special type of its analysis, but also the use of extra-text components. The article describes the technology of conducting a primary analysis of the text of fiction using questions on all spheres of readers’ perception. Such an innovative method of teaching the Russian language and culture to international students makes it possible to pay special attention to the methodological invariant of the implementation of literary works in various types of art as a linguodidactic technology focused on the cultural paradigm. The article shows the sequence of work with metaphor as the image-symbol of the whole literary work. It is this technique that allows you to find in the text an object that reflects the main concepts of the work. Thus, a multifaceted understanding of the complex works of Russian classical literature, necessary for a good literary education of international students, is carried out. We pay close attention to working with texts of large formats with a multi-vector distribution of meanings. We thoroughly describe the technology of working with poetic texts of classical Russian literature, which are both difficult to perceive and necessary to understand the peculiarities of Russian literature and the Russian soul.

Dictionary of composites: new empirical data

The article presents the results of the study of composites that have appeared in the Russian language in recent decades. The relevance of the research is due to the active process of replenishing in the class of composites, as well as a high interest in the study of their structure and semantics. We distinguish the binary structure of compound words (sometimes multicomponent) of varying degrees of solidity and offer four types of their classification. We also identify groups of composites by their thematic attribution.The material under study represents complex lexical units not previously recorded in the dictionaries and provides new empirical data.The material for the study was obtained from various sources: oral speech, fiction, advertising and journalistic texts, Internet resources - the article notes that the range of these words is genetically and structurally heterogeneous: today, the leading trend compared to the early period is the formation of a group of words in the Russian language according to a fixed analytical model: an attribute in the preposition plus a noun.Foreign-language components easily form new words and have high activity, enter into free syntagmatic relations. Such a feature – the presence of analytical neoplasms – is a consequence of the general trend of the modern Russian language – the growth of analyticism.The article notes that many complex words form combinations with a common component, thereby creating word-formation models, as well as single classes and word-formation fields.The functional status, the degree of assimilation of components, the ability to enter into syntagmatic relations, as well as the frequency and other characteristics of the words considered here are not similar. The article notes that the process of borrowing, which has moved to various functional areas, as well as the formation of new complex words according to the models considered in the article, contribute to the development and expansion of the lexical composition in the modern Russian language.

An analysis of the Vodolazkin’s novel "The Aviator" in senior high school

The study of the semiotic space of literature still remains interesting and in demand, and the semiotic analysis has proved to be a rather successful method in the collection of methods of a literature teacher at school. In the article, the author proceeds from the necessity of using a complex analysis of a fiction text based to a greater extent on semiotic consideration, which includes, in addition to semiotic analysis, analysis of biographical context and partly philological analysis, in senior high schools. The author substantiates the necessity of introducing such a method in the study of modern literature, showing it on the example of complex analysis of the Evgeny Vodolazhkin’s novel "The Aviator". Thus, the aim of the study is to describe the application of the method of semiotic analysis (in combination with others) of works of fiction in the course of literature in senior high school. The relevance of the chosen topic in the novelty of the researched material: the text of the novel. Modern literature still needs a comprehensive study. The novelty of the article consists in the chosen approach to the analysis of the novel with the use of semiotic arsenal of means, as well as in the description of the application of the novel's material in the curriculum at the lessons of literature in senior high school. Using the methods of semiotic, philological and contextual analyses, the author developed a literature lesson plan for the 11th grade of a comprehensive school. This plan can be used in practice, which will allow a teacher supplement and expand the school study of modern literature by a popular new author. As a result of the analysis, it was concluded that this kind of complex analysis of modern fiction can reveal lines of interconnection and continuity with classical literature. Finding such intertextual links with both Russian classical and world literature will allow students to build a logical and coherent picture of the development of the literary process up to the modern stage. As a result of the analysis, the conclusion is made about didactic applicability of the text of the novel in the practice of teaching literature, and the novel itself is presented within the framework of the analysis as a rather complex and rich artistic work in terms of meaning, involving numerous interpretations.

Fictional Discourse and Text vs. Fictional Interdiscourse and Intertext in Cognitive Linguistics: From Theory to Practice

Fictional Discourse and Text vs. Fictional Interdiscourse and Intertext in Cognitive Linguistics: From Theory to Practice