WHAT THE AUSTRIAN WOMAN OF 1930S IS SILENT ABOUT (ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE CHARACTERS OF R. WELSHʼS NOVEL “JOHANNA”)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of “female” silence of the 1930s in the novel “Johanna” by the famous Austrian writer Renate Welsh. According to the plot, silence has a special nature, mediated by the self-esteem and emotional state of the female characters. We tentatively distinguish three stages of formation of “female” silence: 1) cultural and traditional (foster family as a model of speech behavior); 2) regulatory and etiquette (society as a driver of speech behavior); 3) pragmatic-rational (human relations as a strategy and tactics of speech behavior). Silence is interpreted as an antonym of speech, which has various communicative and socio-psychological functions. It was found that the semantics of silence correlates with biological age, social status, education, upbringing, and geography. A number of motivators of silence were identified, and their semantic analysis was carried out, which focuses on physical pain, negative emotions (insult, fear of bleeding, fear of losing a dog) and negative feelings (distrust of a peer, dislike of a daughter for her mother). Here we add cognitive, volitional, biological, physiological and physical processes, manipulation, deviant behavior of men with different ideologies, documents, and an imaginary proxy. The idea of the cultural and national specificity of silence and the peculiarities of the national mentality of the Austrian ethnic community has been confirmed. In situations of interpersonal communication, silence is identical to the expression of the reaction to the surrounding world and the quality of the course of a certain situation. Linguistics of silence appears in two ways: explicit (manifest) and implicit (hidden). The so-called explicit silence is represented by words, phrases, infinitive phrases, sentences, implicit – by the verbal context, respectively. The verbal context contains a description of somatic, touch, representation, emotional state or independent movement caused by the functions of the characters.