Баяш Д.Ә., Ахметова А.Е.

Региональный социально – инновационный университет

The peculiarities of the individual style of O. Henry

The author’s world picture is verbalized in the text (or texts) individual perception and interpretation of the world, its conceptualization and categorization in accordance with the author’s views, cultural and aesthetic values. The author’s world picture is determined by the content and the author’s cognitive system consisting of concepts and their hierarchical interpretations and peculiar to the idiostyle linguistic features displayed in: the selection of lexical units; the use of certain thematic groups, keywords; the usage of the expressive means and stylistic devices; syntactic and compositional peculiarities of text construction.

Accordingly, the interpretation of the author’s world picture consists of three stages: content analysis, stylistic analysis and conceptual analysis. Content analysis is aimed at revealing the main themes of the texts under analysis. Stylistic analysis reveals the peculiar features of the idiostyle. Conceptual analysis based on both content and stylistic analyses, reveals the author’s vision and a specific way of conceptualizing the imaginary world.

An important role in content analysis is assigned to the thematic words, repetitive and leitmotif words, symbols, synonymic and antonymic rows forming the content inline of the literary text. All these linguistic units are called “key signs”.

It should be noted that in the linguistic literature the term “key sign” is sometimes interchanged with the word "key word" which is also widely used, they are also called "supporting member" or “key element” and etc. We have chosen the term “key signs” for it seems to us to be more appropriate, since the key sign can include not only single words, but, phrases, sentences, super-phrasal units. Key signs as "semantically important elements of the text” play the central role in the interpretation of the author’s world picture [1].

The key signs are the units which are distinguished by a high degree of recurrence in the literary text. They occupy a significant place in the literary text space. The key sings are the lexical-semantic units expressing the basic ideas of the author. Besides, in the literary text key signs play a particularly important role in setting the semantic connections and organization of the reader's perception. The key signs help to determine the semantic dominant in the context, to present information in a concise form. Thus, the key words representing the individual author's vision of the world, being a kind of authorial intention markers, are of particular conceptual significance. In the short stories by O. Henry, the author very often uses in his stories such key signs as “rich” and “poor”. There are many word combinations with these words: rich suggestion, rich soil, rich harvest, rich milk, rich dish, rich colour, poor people, poor beggar, poor wretch, poor body, poor house, poor creature, poor cat, poor child, poor crop, poor quality, poor attendance, poor choice, poor company, poor health, poor eyesight, poor excuse, poor figure, poor judgment, poor singer, poor fish , a poor worm like him, a poor-spirited boy.

The key words being often repeated in the literary text can obtain a "symbolic meaning". For instance, in the story “The Enchanted Profile” the words “money”, “wealth”, “dollar” are very often repeated symbolizing the main heroin’s “passion” for money , which she adores, saves and increases. What was striking about Mrs.Brown is her friendship with a very poor girl working in the hotel and her sympathy for the girl: «You have a face exactly like a dear friend of mine – the best friend I ever had» [, p. 533]. And only at the end of the story the reader understands who was the dearest friend of the woman, it was the profile of the American president which is presented on the silver coin of the dollar. The woman adored only “ the dollar”, which replaced all human feelings: “love” for she loved nobody, “friends” for she had no friends, except for the girl whose profile reminded the profile of the president on the dollar. “The dollar” in this story is the symbol of the lost moral values.

Stylistic analysis is an essential part of conceptual analysis aimed at the author’s world picture interpretation. It is accounted for by the fact that stylistic means especially stylistic devices are regarded as means of transmitting the conceptual information of the text representing the author’s world picture and knowledge structures. In this respect the selection of stylistic devices by O. Henry such as metaphors, metonymies, similes and epithets presents his unique way of the world representation. The stylistic devices created by O. Henry are diverse and conceptually relevant.

The most conspicuous feature of O. Henry style is an accumulation of stylistic devices and expressive means within one fragment of the text. This phenomenon is called the convergence of stylistic devices. Stylistic means brought together reinforce both logical and emotive emphasis of each other, thus attracting the reader’s attention to each other.

By way of illustration, let us consider the scope of lexical means used in short stories by O. Henry ranging from the literary to conversational, from colloquial to dialectal and slang expressions: to be about to die, a crack on a head, nix cum rous, to blow in one's money, to snap one's fingers. The simultaneous usage of bookish words and the colloquial vocabulary does not violate the integrity of the content of the stories: On the sidewalk Soapy began to yell drunken gibberish at the top of his harsh voice. He danced, howled, raved, and otherwise disturbed the welkin. This way the poor Soapy wants to gain the attention of the policeman. From the synonymic row sky—welkin— heaven the author chooses the archaic word “welkin” which is in combination with colloquial words “to yell”, “to howl”, and a word combination “drunken gibberish” creates an ironical effect. Thus, a combination of neutral words with elevated or colloquial rough creates the desired effect on the reader.

Literature:

1. https://www.cliffsnotes.com/cliffsnotes/subjects/writing/what-is-the-author-s-style-of-a-book