SELF-ORGANIZATION MECHANISMS OF COMPOSITIONAL LEVELS OF ENGLISH DETECTIVE STORIES

Abstract

The self-organization mechanism is based on the presence of constant conflicts or contradictions on each compositional level of the story and their creative solution. At the formal level, there is a contradiction between the completion of each block of information and the necessity to break that completeness in order to link the block to other units of the formal layer. Such contradictions at the formal level are settled by the fact that the blocks which should be linked are indicated by the same markers. The setting of such markers is the most free and flexible procedure. Herewith, one and the same marker can belong to different levels of the detective story composition, but then at higher levels it acquires a different functional loading apart from the function of showing the formal linkage.

At the formal-and-content level, a constant contradiction is conditioned by the initial mismatch between the addresser’s and the addressee’s perceptions of the world, their linguistic competence. This contradiction is also settled by the markers present in the CCF and ACF, which point at some important details necessary for the plot understanding. In this way, the role and importance of different speech units of the formal-and-content level of the composition are defined.

At the content level, the contradiction lies in the interlocutors’ disagreement as to the sequence of the use of CCF and ACF. The markers help the addressee understand the plot, actions, and ideas in the order of use of these forms as well as find attributes of images and concepts. The markers in CCF and ACF are arranged in such a way that they guide the reader along the narration of the events of the story, repeating the branching of the plot and returning to the previous events. This is clearly revealed in the outline of the detective story intrigue. At the associative-and-figurative (conceptual) level the contradiction is in the opposition of the “nonliving” essence of the words-signs, in discreteness of attributes and the necessity of their cohesive “living” perception. Trope markers largely serve for the integral cohesive perception of the story.