Nonfiction and artistic texts

As the essential features of artistic and non-artistic communication are most often called [1]:

1) the presence / absence of a direct connection between communication and human activity;

2) the absence / presence of aesthetic function;

3) the explicitness / implicitness of the content (absence / presence of overtones);

4) setting unambiguous / ambiguous perception;

5) installation on reflection of real / unreal reality (literary texts represent not a model of reality, but consciously constructed possible models of reality).

The first positions in this list are signs of non-artistic texts, the second - artistic texts.

Art texts have their own typology, oriented to genus-genre features.

Non-fiction texts have their own private typology: mass communication texts; scientific texts; official business texts.

The artistic text is built according to the laws of associative-figurative thinking, non-artistic - according to the laws of logical thinking. In the artistic text, the life material is transformed into a kind of “small universe” seen by the eyes of this author. Therefore, in the artistic text behind the depicted pictures of life there is always a subtextual, interpretative functional plan, “secondary reality”. Non-fiction text, as a rule, is one-dimensional and one-dimensional, the reality is real and objective. The artistic text and non-artistic reveal different types of effects - on the emotional sphere of the human person and the intellectual sphere; In addition, the law of psychological perspective operates in the artistic image. Finally, these texts also differ in their function - communicative-informational (non-artistic text) and communicative-aesthetic (artistic text).

The artistic text is based on the use of figurative and associative qualities of speech. The image here is the ultimate goal of creativity, whereas in a non-artistic text, verbal imagery is fundamentally not necessary and, if available, is only a means of conveying (explaining) information. In the artistic text, the means of imagery are subordinated to the aesthetic ideal of the artist (fiction is a type of art); the secondary role of the verbal image in non-fiction (for example, popular science) frees the author from such subordination: he is concerned about others - using the image (comparison, metaphor) to convey the informational essence of a concept, phenomenon.

Thus, for a non-artistic text, the logical-conceptual, if possible objective, essence of facts and phenomena is important, and for an artistic text, it is figurative-emotional, inevitably subjective. It turns out that for an artistic text the form itself is substantial, it is exceptional and original, the essence of artistry is in it, since the “life-like form” chosen by the author serves as a material for expressing other, different content, for example, the description of the landscape may not be needed by itself, this is only a form for the transfer of the internal state of the author, characters. Due to this other, different content, a “secondary reality” is created. The internal figurative plan is often transmitted through the external subject plan. This creates a duplicity and diversity of the text, which is contraindicated for non-artistic text.

Since associative links dominate in the artistic text, the artistic word is practically conceptually inexhaustible. Different associations cause different “escalations of meaning” (VV Vinogradov's term). Even the same realities of the objective world can be perceived by different artists in different ways, causing different associations. For example, the “stone” of O. Mandelstam is a symbol of rigor, reliability (“Stone” is the name of the book), while in I. Annensky it is a symbol of constraint, spiritual oppression (“Longing of a white stone”). “Sun” for K. Balmont is a symbol of festivity, spontaneity, vitality, and for F. Sologub - the symbol of everything drying, doping, and deadening. For an artistic text, it is not so much the subject-conceptual world that is important as the representation — the visual image of the object that arises in memory, in imagination. It is a representation - a transitional link between direct perception and concept.

The texts differ in artistic and non-artistic and in the character of analyticism : in non-artistic texts, analyticism is manifested through a system of argumentation, open proof; In artistic texts, analyticism is hidden in nature; it is based on individually selected laws. The artist, in principle, does not prove, but tells, using concrete and figurative ideas about the world of objects.

In terms of the structure and function of sentences, non-artistic and artistic texts also differ markedly. Structural role in non-artistic texts recognized to perform the structure of rational-logical, and in the artistic texts - emotional and rhetorical [2]. Rational-logical structures correlate the text with reality, and emotional-rhetorical - with the interpretation of reality. Therefore, in the second case, the modular components of statements will prevail over dictum ones. As a result, increased text expressiveness.

Since rational-logical structures reflect the factual side of the message, elements of these structures cannot be removed without prejudice to the meaning, whereas falling out of emotional-rhetorical links does not violate the general content of the text, but only discolors it, bringing it to a neutral sound.

The role of emotional-rhetorical structures increases in different texts in the movement from a scientific presentation to an artistic one. Texts such as scientific and business (relatively structurally simple) are mostly organized by rational-logical structures.

The role of emotional-rhetorical structures is characteristic of literary texts, although it is quite noticeable in the texts of mass communication (in particular, in newspapers), where the principle on the affecting function of speech means and the text in general is crucial.

In the following text, taken for example, the phrases in the style of presentation are factological; they are deprived of emotional and evaluative nuances, focused on the transfer of objective content:

The chronological range of labor M.I. Pylyaeva is limited mainly to the second half of the 18th century, opening with a description of coronation celebrations in connection with the accession of Catherine II to the throne and ending with a characteristic history of commerce in China Town in the 17th – 15th centuries. However, the author, tracing the biography of the heroes of the narrative and their genealogies, goes far beyond the originally conceived framework, capturing the time of Peter, the reign of Anna Ivanovna and Elizaveta Petrovna, as well as the years of the reign of Paul I and Alexander I. Thus, the time in which events occur and act historical characters of the book, includes not only the entire eighteenth century, the interest in which was extremely great in the last century, but goes beyond its limits (Yu.N. Aleksandrov. Intro. The article to the book "Old Moscow" M.I. Pylyaev A. M., 1996).

Such a presentation is basically focused on rational-logical structures and is designed for intellectual perception.

And this is what the presentation of the author himself, represented by Yu.N. Alexandrov books "Old Moscow":

In 1771, a terrible disaster visited Moscow - in January a terrible deadly ulcer opened in the capital. Plague was brought to Moscow by troops from Turkey ...

Residents of the capital have become despondent ... According to an eyewitness, Podshivalov, people died daily in the thousands ...

This is how PI describes this terrible time. Strakhov, a professor at Moscow University, who was still a high school student.

“Here, it happened, ” he says, “I, in a government raznochinsky coat of crimson cloth with a blue collar and cuffs on a blue stamed [woolen and cosonitic ] cloth, with copper yellow big buttons and in a triangle with bright hat, running from my brother with paper in hand on the shaft, and people from different houses all over the road crawl out and wait for me, and only envy, happened, and shout: “Child, child, how much?” And I fly, jumping up and shouting, them, for example: "Six hundred, six hundred." And good people used to be baptized and insist: “Thank God, thank God!” This is because the day before I shouted seven hundred, and eight hundred the day before! Mortality was terrible and grew until September, so that in August there were dead a little bit not eight thousand ” (p. 45).

This presentation, with evaluative adjectives, with direct speech, colloquially-folk forms, is emotionally colored; it not only names the described event, but also conveys the state of its eyewitnesses. It is clear that the author of a popular book about Moscow is not limited only to the statement of facts and therefore turns to the means of artistic representation. Such a statement aims to emotional impact.

The rational-logical structure of speech in a non-artistic text is emphasized by the most explicit expression of content and the most connectedness [3]. Causal relationships here are expressed predominantly lexically ( because, because, as a result , etc.), word order is preferable to direct, emotionally saturated words and expressive constructions are missing. Such a structure of speech differs significantly from that of an artistic or publicistic text, dominated by emotional and rhetorical structures. Moreover, these structural differences may not be so pronounced, although they are quite tangible. Let's compare, for example, the following sentences-statements: He found out his stop, got off. Now, a kilometer and a half had to go along a broad street of a dull factory type, without a tree, red-hot (A. Solzhenitsyn. Cancer building). - Wed: He recognized his stop and got off. Now I had to walk a mile and a half along a wide, hot street of a dull factory type that does not have a single tree.

Despite the almost complete lexical coincidence (and one hundred percent complete coincidence is substantive), these phrases do not coincide emotionally: the second option has lost its emotional “content”, the word order is not determined by intonational nuances, but by the logical clear reproduction of syntactic dependencies of word forms. The rationality and consistency of the construction here reinforced the factuality of the phrase, depriving it of Solzhenitsyn's intonation, conveying the emotional state of the hero. When comparing phrases of this type, it is impossible to use the criterion of what is better and what is worse: the principle of expediency turns out to be more acceptable - which is more appropriate for the text's purpose, its purpose.

The following context is fully logized and rationalized in terms of structure:

The ideologized information standard came into an irresistible contradiction with the civilized information standard, at least in two ways: the information in the ideologically biased press, first, was, on the one hand, redundant, and on the other , reduced and therefore insufficient; secondly, it was distinguished by a high degree of uncertainty [4]. The marked quality of the text is reinforced here by the abundantly presented terminology and introductory words of the logical plan.

And here is another text structure:

It is necessary for someone to come, take my hand and bring me from distress to stress, from stress to a bad mood, and so on, through suffering to joy.

But who can get me out? Husband? Friend? Another Friend? Mashka Kudryavtseva with Kostya?

The bell rings. I look from the table to the phone. The phone is silent. Then I understand that the doorbell is ringing.

I get up and go to the door. And I open the door.

In the doorway is my neighbor on the floor, whom I call Belladonna, which in Italian means “beautiful woman” (V. Tokareva. Star in the Fog).

In this text there are no figuratively (figuratively) used words, and there are no words of emotionally expressive (except for Masha and Kostya colloquially diminutive forms), but the phrases in this context are clearly emotional: dismemberment using question structures, repetition, parcellation, incompleteness of grammatical structures , often there is no alliance. All this suggests that the passage belongs to an artistic text.

So, the emotion that permeates the artistic text is not necessarily associated with the imagery, although imagery is one of the components of the artistic text. That is why it seems necessary to dwell in greater detail on the concept of “verbal image.”

[1] See: M.A. Gventsadze Communicative linguistics and text typology. Tbilisi, 1986. p. 91.

[2] See: Odintsov V.V. The style of the text. M., 1980.

[3] Wed Characteristics of the model of scientific and technical text in the book: E. Andreeva The dialectic of the text. The experience of logical-linguistic synthesis. M., 2001. S. 71.

[4] Culture of Russian Speech / Ed. ed. L.K. Graudina, E.N. Shiryaev. M., 2000. p. 243.

See also

• Types of texts