LEXICAL COMBINATIONS IN BRITISH FICTION TEXTS ON MILITARY THEMES

Abstract

This article focuses on lexical-semantic and pragmatic-stylistic properties of lexical combinations in British fiction texts on military themes of the beginning of the XXI century. The novelty of the research is accounted for by shedding light on the semantic and pragmatic-stylistic characteristics of lexical units and their combinations representing the war theme in British fiction texts on military themes of the 2000–2017 on the basis of pragmatic-stylistic and pragmatic-discourse approaches, in particular, analysing lexical-semantic space within its three-dimensional expansion: semantic, thematic and associative; detecting tendencies of functioning of lexical combinations and strategies chosen by the author in order to render an urgent problem of war in contemporary literary fiction texts.

Lexical-semantic space is considered to be a complex system of lexical units, united into microsystems (fields, groups, subgroups, etc.) on the basis of a common theme and conceptual meaning representing a certain conceptual sphere. Inter­pretation of the literary texts and their general influence on readers are highly dependent on the lexical units, thoroughly selected by the author in accordance with his/her intention. The outlining of lexical-semantic, lexical-thematic and lexi­cal-associative groups and fields contributed to the detailed analysis of functional representation of the lexical structures of literary texts at the deep and surface levels, modelling of the core and peripheral information blocks of the lexical-semantic space of a text.

This research concentrates on the text-composing lexical units and combinations of the contemporary British literary prose text on military themes taking into account lingual and extra-lingual factors determining their use by the author. Interpretation of the literary text and its general influence on the reader highly depends on the lexical units selected by the author. Thus, it seems reasonable to conduct a detailed study of lexical-stylistic peculiarities and pragmatic direction of the literary prose text taking into consideration all the extra-lingual conditions on the basis of pragmatic stylistics. Integrating the methods of stylistics and pragmatics, pragmatic stylistics is underpinned with the usage-based approach to the study of the peculiarities of lexical units and their combinations, as well as the analysis of their pragmatic direction to the recipient taking into account the extra-lingual context. All the lexical structures in a literary text are chosen by the author with a defi­nite aim – creating a certain atmosphere and producing a desired effect on the reader. The author’s intentions are highly influenced by the social, extra-lingual context. This is quite obvious in the texts on military themes, since its micro-inclu­sions frequently penetrate the texts of other genres and themes. The pragmatic-stylistic approach contributes to a deeper immersion into the literary discourse, taking into consideration the whole context and extra-linguistic factors. It opens the new horizons to the further investigation of the contemporary British literary texts on military themes.