ORAL AND WRITTEN NARRATIVE: DISCOURSE TYPES AND FUNCTIONS (LITHUANIAN PROSE, TEXT LINGUISTICS)

The relationship of ordinary and "poetic" language, oral and written texts, has been a subject of speculation in literary theory and linguistics throughout this century. Retaining the classical distinction between high and low style, early responses to the question, e.g. the Russian formalist, centered on attributing poetic language to a separate category; however, recognition of the relativity of a narrator's information and similarities at the speech-act level of discourse have brought about a perception of linguistic similitude. In this study, various critical positions--formalist, structuralist, linguistic--are reviewed and evaluated, while theory unaccompanied by a useable model of language and a lack of sophistication about literary texts in general are found to limit the applicability of many of these previous insights to actual language use.;Later chapters turn to direct analysis and demonstration of transcriptions of extended spontaneous oral monologues, examining them from literary, discourse analysis and sociolinguistic perspectives. Some structures and features of oral texts are identified. Next preliterary material from the early Lithuanian prose tradition (19 C.) is examined to isolate features of orality and literariness. Some markers and typical structures of orality having been established, a story early in the literary tradition is segmented according to linguistic and literary methodologies. Thus discourse types and their functions in a literary context can be identified and the relationship between a literary narrator and his/her material described.;Chapter Four then uses the data obtained to draw conclusions about discourse types and their functions in oral and written texts, to predict their presence and structural/functional overlap. The Chapter also discusses performance factors in ordinary language and literary convention in the poetic variety, bringing out other features, such as narratorial options, technical variety, textual organization, and the reader's role, in self-conscious narrative. Some of the multivalence and coherence of poetic language is accounted for through its use of semantically meaningful repetition. The activity of communicating experience in language makes ordinary and poetic language appear similar; however, their discourse structures and functions overlap only rarely and in predictable ways.