Филологические науки/ 3. Теоретические и методологические проблемы исследования языка.

PhD in Philology, Karpukhina V.N.

Altai State University, Russia

Macrostrategies of a Fiction Text Interpretation: Cognitive-Axiological Issues

The situation of the contemporary communication process imply the new objects under linguistic consideration. These new objects of the linguistic reality are discourse, intertext, hypertext [1]; [3]; [6]; [7]. The article deals with a fiction text interpretation macrostrategies when the text is transferred into the other cultural semiosphere. The object under consideration is a fiction text. The article aims in grounding the list of text interpretation macrostrategies which effect the text social acculturation in the other cultural semiosphere. The article considers the translator’s activity as aimed to use the text interpretation macrostrategies based, in their turn, onto the interpretation microstrategies and dealing with the texts cognitive models changes. The work results in the list of fiction text interpretation macrostrategies which help to evaluate the degree of social acculturation of a fiction text when functioning in the other cultural semiosphere. The macrostrategies of a text interpretation are adaptation, foreigning, archaization, and modernization of a source text.

The complexity of the communication process perceived as the only available linguistic reality (in its audial or written form) leads to the linguists’ transfer from the complex static cognitive models (proposition, plan, script) to the dynamic models (frame, scenario, thesaurus, etc.).

It seems inevitable in the postmodern communicative situation when linguists use the methods of social or natural sciences. This tendency shows their will to create integrative concepts inside the still-existing scientific paradigm in linguistics. For example, the scientists working in the cognitive-discursive paradigm use the methodology and the results of social linguistics, psycholinguistics, language philosophy studies when analyzing text, discourse, intertext, hypertext to construe the models of these objects of the linguistic reality. It helps to make the models more adequate and detailed to represent the main features of the objects analyzed.

We consider the axiological linguistic strategies the usage of which is based on some definite axiological parameters to be the fundamental part of a text production and interpretation processes. The cognitive linguistics methodology is very efficient when studying the strategic component of different discourses actualization. Macrostrategies using in the fiction text interpretation (especially in the interlinguistic communication) are the strategies of adaptation (domesticating [5, s. 205]), foreigning [ibid.], archaization and modernization of a source text. We’ll consider the first two of these macrostrategies.

The macrostrategy of adaptation / foreigning of a source text reveals the possibilities of the space semantic category varying during the interlinguistic communication (we mention both the text and cultural space). Bipolarity of this macrostrategy is determined by the translator’s need to the whole text acculturation or, vice versa, to making the effect of a text as a different culture product. Adaptation can be defined as a “reterrititorialization” or “annexation” of the original work, the “naturalizing” the text for the new audience to achieve the same effect that the work originally had, but with an audience from a different cultural background [8, p. 6]. Defining the adaptation of a source text as its “domesticating”, [5, s. 205], U. Eco calls it a “localization”, the translator’s macrostrategy aiming to draw the source text nearer to the target text and culture. The adaptation macrostrategy can be brought out from the axiological strategies of the translators to interpret the argumental structure of the source text frame propositions.

The exact opposite to the domesticating macrostrategy is a foreigning macrostrategy. The term usage originates from the Russian formalists’ (e.g. V. Shklovskij [4]) works. In the European tradition, this term means a strategy by using which a translator “makes a reader to see the object perceiving in an unusual perspective to understand it better than he did before” [Eco, s. 206]. Being critical about the so called “sociocultural translation model”, A. Neubert says the translators use such a model techniques to perceive the target texts as “glimpses into alternative realities” [7, p. 25]. The signs of different cultural spaces should remain in the translated text as the markers of the “sojourn into alien territories” [ibid.]. A. Neubert discusses such the translators’ strategies as the “resistive translation” (K. Venuti), which is extremely close by its basic ideas to the “analytical translation” of V.P. Rudnev.

Speaking about the “foreigning effect necessity” [2, s. 52], V.P. Rudnev used the mentioned macrostrategy in his analytical translation of the books by A.A. Milne into Russian. To put into practice the pragmatic effect of his analytical translation, Rudnev keeps some parts of the source text propositions being lexicalized as the fragments of another (English) linguistic reality in the target text: Underneath the knocker there was a notice which said: PLEZ RING IF AN RNSER IS REQIRD. – И прямо под Дверным Молотком висело объявление, гласившее: PLEZ RING IF AN RNSER IS REQIRD [2, s. 87]. The propositions in English can’t be construed into the whole textual frame structure of a target text, but exist independently.

The macrostrategy of a text foreigning used throughout all text by the translator makes an assistance in the intentionally gained “unreadability” of the translated text and constant reminiscences from the linguistic reality of the source text. The modeling space of the target text becomes multicultural and creates probably some new meanings in the process of the text interpretation because of the global text connections lost.

When the interpreter uses the macrostrategy of a text adaptation, it allows to evaluate the text as an assimilated one into the other culture. The text becomes a part of a literature and later – of a symbolic capital of this culture. When the interpreter uses the macrostrategy of foreigning, it allows to evaluate the actions with the target text as the intentionally used strategic actions of the interpreter to differentiate the semiotic spaces of the source and target texts, so the target text as a wholesome phenomenon shouldn’t be assimilated into the other cultural semiosphere.

Exactly opposite macrostrategies of the text adaptation and foreigning are based on the changes connected to the space characteristics of the source and target texts. Widening, narrowing or complete change of the cultural, semiotic, language space occur when the axiological linguistic macrostrategies of interpretation are applied to the propositional structures of the source and target texts.

References

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