INTERROGATIVE SENTENCE IN A LITERARY TEXT (ON THE LAST FIVE YEARS STORIES MATERIAL)

Abstract

The article presents the results of the analysis of the functions of interrogative sentences in modern experimental (fragmented) fiction, that reflects the processes of disintegration, based on the works of small prose (about 5 % of all short story texts) published in the magazines “Znamya”, “Octyabr’” and “Novyj mir” in the last 5 years. The selection of the material is based on the author’s definition of the narrative genre (short story, small prose, other prose, prose), on the formed discreteness of the text (various types of rubrication at the level of macro-syntax, at the level of microsyntax — the dismemberment of the syntagmatic chain of the sentence, the elimination of connectivity indicators, the use of alternative punctuation), on the identification of non-standard metagraphemics as the design piece of art’s means. A comprehensive analysis of the disintegration degree of small volume texts with interrogative sentences (question marks), pragmatics (types of questions), structural features (single questions, chains of interrogative sentences, combination with parcellation), the context of the introduction (position in the structure of the text and the presence/absence of a direct answer in a question-and-answer situation) allows you to determine the following functions of interrogative sentences in the text of experimental prose of small form 1) complication of the subject perspective of the text by removing the traditional punctuation of the parties of speakers in dialogues and including private questions in them; 2) metalanguage narrator’s reflection performing in the text with the help of existential rhetorical questions and unanswered questions; 3) the performance of the text-forming function of interrogative sentences in lyric monologues reflecting auto-communication. The revealed features of questions in modern prose reflect the author’s search for a means of compensation for disintegration, the increasing colloquialism of a literary text and the change in the recipient’s perception of his narrative (the desire to remove distance, modeling online communication), which is predetermined by the orientation to the modern reader, the search for new forms of artistic communication. Refs 18.