Lecture 2 Texts Interpretation: Approaches, Processes, and Problems

References:

1. Elbow, Peter. A Community of Writers: A Workshop Course in Writing / Peter Elbow, Pat Belanoff. – 1^st ed. McGraw-Hill, Inc.1989.– 493 p. – pp. 251-260, 410, 427-429, 430-436 (reading hall).

2. Widdowson, H. G. Practical Stylistics: an approach to poetry. Oxford University Press, 1992. – 230 p. – PP. IIX – XIV, 188-194.

3. Арнольд, И.В. Стилистика современного английского языка : (Стилистика декодирования): учеб. пособие для студентов пед. ин-тов. – М.: Просвещение, 1990. – 300 с. (library)

4. Richards, J.C. Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics. Pearson Education, 2002. – 595 p.

5. Galperin, I.R. Stylistics. M.: Higher School, 1977. – 332 p. – PP. 319- 322.

6. Verdonk, P. Stylistics. – OUP, 2003. – 124 p. (reading hall)

Plan:

1. Types of information in the text.
2. The process of reading and the problem of meaning.
3. Approaches to text interpretation.
4. Problems of interpreting texts.

1. The information contained in a text is its content.

The information conveyed by a text may be of different kinds: content-conceptual and content-factual.

Content-conceptual information is that which reveals the formation of notions, ideas or concepts. It's not confined to merely imparting facts, descriptions, events, etc. it's not always easily discernible, may not lie on the surface of its verbal exposition. It may only be grasped after a minute examination of the constituents of the text provided that the reader has acquired the skill of supralinear analysis. It may have various interpretations and not frequently reveals divergent views as to its purpose. It may be encountered in the belles-lettres and some other functional styles, in diplomatic texts.

Content-factual informationis contained in the matter-of-fact styles, i.e. newspaper style, in the texts of official documents and in some others.

Such a division of information may emphasize the crucial difference between what is more or less clearly stated in verbal chains and what is only suggested and therefore needs mental effort to get at what is said by the unsaid.

Galperin suggests the following procedures in stylistic analysis which will facilitate the process of disclosing the kind of information contained in the given text.

1. Determining the kind of text being dealt with (taxonomic stage of analysis). There is an immediate need to get a clear idea as to what functional style this or that text belongs and what definite model of a text (e.g. the style of official documents, a memorandum).

2. Content-grasping stage aims at an approximate understansing of the content of the given text (it does not claim to be a complete and exhaustive penetration into the hidden purpose of the author).

3. Semantic procedure has as its purpose the close observation of the meanings of separate words and word combinations as well as of the significations of the various sentences and supra-phrasal units. It is advisable at this stage of analysis to consult dictionaries inasmuch as dictionaries will show the polysemy of the words, thus enabling to distinguish a simultaneous realization of two or more meanings of a word in the sentence.

4. The stylistic stage aims at finding out what additional information might be impaired by the author's use of various stylistic devices.

5. The functional stage brings us back to the second one and sets the task of investigating the conceptual information contained in the whole of the text. The previously acquired data should be assembled and a kind of synthesis of all procedures should be made.

6. The suggested sequence has proved to be the most efficient in getting a deeper insight into what constitutes the notion text.

2. Humans are meaning-making creatures. We can't help trying to make sense of all our experiences – including our reading experiences. So while we are in the process of reading something, we are always engaged in creating meaning from the words. We often remain unaware of this emerging meaning as we read, particularly if we're just reading for pleasure. But if a friend stops us while we're in the middle of reading something and asks us what it means, we can usually make explicit the tentative emerging meaning we have been building in our minds.

Reading may look passive: we sit quietly and let the image of the words print itself in our retina and thus pass inward to our brain. But reading is a deeply active process of exploration. In fact, when we have trouble reading it's often because we've been mistakenly trying to be passive – trying to make ourselves like good cameras. But since reading doesn't work that way, our performance suffers when we try to operate on that model.

Research on reading gives more and more evidence of how quick, active, and complicated the process is – how much goes on below the level of awareness. Since we don't "take in meaning", but rather "make meaning", we do that making on the basis of all the thoughts, feelings, and experiences already inside us – not just on the basis of words on the page. We are not, of course, born knowing the meanings of words in our native language; we come to know the meanings of words by listening to and observing others. We cannot make the word chat mean whatever we want it to mean, but at the point when we use or read the word, we are determining its meaning on the basis of prior personal experiences.

The central activity of reading is making of meaning. We tend to think that "meaning" is "out there," that our task in reading is to discover it – not to make it. But even though it looks as though writers "have" meanings which they "put into words" – and then readers "take the meaning out" at the other end – this is an illusion. We don't have a meaning till we have words for it. But even this does not encompass the complexity: words cannot "have" or "contain" meanings – only people can; words are only meaningful insofar as people attribute meanings to them. In short, words cannot transport a writer's meanings into our heads; they can only give us a set of directions for creating our own meanings in our own heads – meanings which, if all goes well, will resemble what the writer had in mind.

Thus, reading is not finding meaning but making meaning – not hunting for messages that already exist there, but building messages. If you have the wrong idea of reading, you tend to feel (if things go well), "Oh goody, I found it" – as an Easter egg hunt. And if things don't go well you feel, "Oh dear, where did they hide it?" When you are having difficulty in reading, it's counterproductive to think of it as a problem in finding a pesky hidden packet; it's better to think of it as a problem in building or creating.

Therefore to help us read better – particularly when we are reading something difficult or our reading is not going well – we need to pay more attention to the process by which we build meanings out of other people's words. We cannot know the rules for building meaning – almost no one does – but we can watch more closely as we go about building meaning. We can learn to be more sensitive and insightful as we read – and perhaps learn to detect what doesn't fit the meaning we're gradually building up. (What doesn't fit often provides clues to the need for us to shift our sights a bit.) We can learn something about how and why we construct the meanings we do construct. All this we can do instead of just saying, "Where is the meaning? Where did the writer hide it?"

Thus, the process of reading is active and exploratory. The meaning of a text is something that is gradually built up in the process of reading. It emerges through fits and starts of guesses about the future based on expectations from the past (your past experiences with these words and these areas of meaning). In short, reading is a messy, imprecise process – but an interesting one. If you understand it better, you can use it better. People have difficulties in reading when they misunderstand the process and try to make it neat, precise, and mechanical.

So, a reader learning to interpret should pay more attention to the words on the page and their relationships with each other and more attention to the richness – the meanings, reactions, and associations – that he brings to words. By being more skilled at the active and exploratory process of making meaning, you will simply understand more: you will be better at seeing the meaning even in very difficult pieces of writing.

Следует отличать смысл и значение текста. «…значение зафиксировано в чувственном носителе его – обычно в слове или словосочетании» [34, с.297] Смысл не сводится к значениям, но может выражаться в значениях и передаваться с их помощью. Он сообразуется с логикой изложения содержания, с композиционно-логическими закономерностями строения текста.

Смысл текста возникает при его создании. Создатель текста придерживается определенного плана реализации своего замысла. Язык есть та основа, исходя из которой раскрывается смысл текста, то есть язык способствует оформлению этого смысла.

Исследователями даются различные обозначения «целому» в тексте, из которого может быть выведен смысл. Однако во всех случаях подчеркивается, что высказывание, выражающее законченную мысль, представляет собой обычно не предложение, а сложное синтаксическое целое, сверхфразовое единство, в основе которого лежит определенная логическая форма мысли. [46, с.45-46].

Значение слов и словосочетаний в тексте преобразуется под воздействием экстралингвистических/ экстратекстуальных факторов в смысл. Несовпадение значения отдельных элементов текста со смыслом становится ясным из того факта, что не все реципиенты одинаково воспринимают один и тот же текст.

Смысл текста создается одновременно горизонтальным и вертикальным контекстами. И если горизонтальный контекст однозначен, то вертикальный контекст – такое явление, толкование которого зависит от многих экстралингвистических данных, относящихся как к отправителю, так и получателю речи текста. Фоновая информация как часть входит в вертикальный контекст. Усвоенная говорящими на языке текста, она становится фоновыми знаниями, необходимыми для правильного понимания смысла текста. Фоновая информация лежит вне текста (она относится к экстратекстуальным явлениям), но она тесно связана с языковым материалом текста, так как прикреплена к опредмеченным языковым единицам.

Поэтому правильное понимание текста зависит не только от правильного понимания значения языковых единиц, но и от правильного понимания вертикального контекста, которое зависит от фоновых знаний воспринимающего текст. Многие авторы подчеркивают необходимость наличия у читающего определенного «запаса», без которого невозможно восприятие и понимание заложенной в тексте мысли автора в полном ее объеме. Для чтения как речевой деятельности очень важен вопрос объема имеющейся информации, сложности глобальной концептуальной системы или тезауруса читающего при встрече с текстом. «…смысл сообщения зависит от того, каков тезаурус воспринимающего сообщение лица, то есть какими сведениями об объектах, их свойствах, отношениях и связях между ними это лицо обладает до получения в качестве объекта чтения данного текста». [46, с.49].

Таким образом, деятельность с текстом начинается на языковом уровне и перерастает в деятельность на смысловом. Эта двухступенчатость познания обуславливается следующим: «…владение естественным языком… «языковая компетенция» …само по себе еще не приводит к подлинному пониманию какого бы то ни было текста. Языковая компетенция обеспечивает – да и то не всегда – лишь восприятие значения, но не смысла того, что мы слышим или читаем». [18, с.4]. Понимание на уровне значения подразумевает способность читающего передать содержание прочитанного. От этой ступени понимания прочитанного обучаемого надо вести к более трудной, то есть к пониманию на уровне смысла, что предполагает углубленное изучение текста.

3.Engagement with any text is an interactive process. There is always the implication: what do you mean? Why so?

There are various things people do when they analyze a text – or indeed analyze any discourse, spoken or written:

- An analysis of the reasoning: what is the main assertion, the reasons given, and the backing and assumptions that support those reasons? What are strengths and weaknesses of the reasoning?

- An analysis of persuasive strategies other than reasoning.

- An analysis of the voice, tone, diction, and the stance of the writer toward the reader.

- An analysis of the form, structure, organization, division into parts – and how they relate to the meaning.

- An analysis of the figurative language.

There are two main traditions in text analysis:

· Exploring what effect the text has on the reader and explaining how it achieves that effect.

· Exploring the relationship between what is said and how it's said – between the meaning and the form.

Meaning is not a matter of recognition but of realization, not a matter of what a text means, but what a text means to the reader. The very fact that the poem is dislocated from social context gives licence to readers to locate its meaning in their own individual experience. Thus people will produce diverse and divergent interpretations.

We interpret meanings out of texts. The differences of interpretations are conditioned by our particular dispositions, individual experiences of language and reality. And yet the meanings we read into texts are not independent of the texts themselves either. Interpretations must ultimately be referred back to the texts which activated them.

The position that H.G. Widdowson takes is that we neither capture nor create the world with our texts, but interact with it. We use our texts to interact with the world,both that which is socially sanctioned and that which is individually apprehended. In other words,we interpret texts into discourses in different ways.