Scheme of interpretation
1. Say a few words about the author and the cultural context..
2. Give the factual information of the text, that is, briefly relates the plot of the story.
3. Speak on the pragmatic characteristics of the main personages. Extract additional implicit information
from the individual speech habits of the characters concerning their educational qualifications, social
status, age, origin (foreign or native), emotional state at the moment of speech and kind of general
disposition (gay, sad, kind, cruel, restrained uncontrollable, self-confident, timid etc.), their property
status, geographic locality etc., etc..
4. Characterize the composition of the story and its architectonics (proportional relations of the parts of
the text). Point out in what way the composition deviates from the traditional model: exposition;
prologue; beginning of the plot (initial collision) development of the plot; climax; denouement; end;
epilogue and what advantages result from it.
6. Comment on volume-pragmatic and context-variative segmentation of the text (the shape of prose:
narration, description, commentary, dialogue, non personal (represented) speech, autodialogue, stream
of consciousness, monologue.)
9. Characterize the category of modality in the text concentrating on the addressee's way of evaluation:
Is the story in the name of the author, or one of the personages, or an on-looker, eye-witness? Is the
narrator's attitude explicit or hidden? How does the choice of words reveal the authors attitude? Is his
attitude passionate or neutral? Does he avoid straight-forward evaluations and characterize his
personages only through the depiction of their actions or does he characterizethem directly?
11. Reveal the conceptual information of the text (the idea of the story substantiate it by picking out
from the text:
a) Poetic details: depicting details, characterological details, authenticity, implication details and extract
their subcurrent information;
b) Stylistic devices and comment on their functions in revealing theauthor's message and
supplementing superlinear information;
c) Draw conclusions from the linguistic approach to the text. Comment on the degree of the richness of
the author's vocabulary: the usage of borrowings, foreign words, colloquialisms, vulgarisms, scientific
words, neologisms. Is the author experimenting with the language? What unusual word combinations
and nonce words has he coined? Find thematic and key words. Reveal the role of stylistically marked
words and words charged with emotive meaning. Trace cases of repetition of the same word. Does
frequent repetition of a word make it symbolic?
d) Comment on the meaning of the title and connect it with the conceptual information.
The suggested scheme includes nearly all possible characteristics relevant for text interpretation. It must
be noted that each concrete text requires specific approach and some items may prove optional in its
analysis.