INTERTEXTUAL CONNECTIONS IN A FICTIONAL TEXT (ON THE MATERIAL OF THE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE SHORT STORY)

Abstract

The article focuses on the research of intertextual connections in a fictional text, particularly in the English-language short story. Special attention has been paid to the study of various forms and pragmatic functions of intertextuality on the material of British and American short stories (19-20 centuries).The article suggests that any fictional text is not a finished product, as it is a channel of the endless communication process. It has been revealed that there could be communication not only between the participants of the fictional discourse – addresser and addressee, but also there are some connections between different texts. This phenomenon is called intertextuality, which is dialogic interaction of different text types. In the English-language short story intertextuality is observed mainly on the figurative-symbolic level of the composition. Intertextuality functions in the form of reminiscences, quotations, allusions, image and motive borrowings from other fictional texts and references to certain works of art. The results of the conducted analysis have shown that intertextuality promotes associative links expansion, implicit sense understanding or new sense generation, symbolic images creation, concepts revaluation as well as cultural traditions preservation. Due to availability of intertextual connections the English-language short story is characterized as an open dissipative system that is one of the reasons to consider the above-mentioned type of text to be a synergetic system. The presented research is supposed to be a basis for deeper studying synergism of the English-language short story. Thus prospects for the further research are the analysis of intertextuality as a synergetic phenomenon and the diachronic development of the English-language short story style from the synergetic point of view.