WAYS OF REPRESENTING CONTEXTS WITH NON-VERBAL COMPONENT IN COMEDY FANTASY TEXTS (BASED ON TERRY PRACHETT’S NOVEL “MEN AT ARMS”)

Abstract

Purpose: to determine the ways of representing contexts with non-verbal component in Terry Pratchett’s novel “Men at Arms” as an example of the comedy fantasy genre. Methods: methоds of textual and interpretive analysis and methods of speech act analysis, methods of pragmalinguistics, discursive analysis. Results. Nonverbal communication is a method of information exchange in which the human body serves as a means for transmitting information. Means of non-verbal communication are elements of the communicative code which have a non-linguistic (but symbolic) nature and, together with the means of the language code, serve to create, transmit and receive messages. Understanding the features of non-verbal communication in the literary text allows to better understand the intentions of the characters, their thoughts, motives, inner experiences; in particular, in Terry Pratchett’s novel “Men at Arms” as an example of the comedy fantasy genre, in which the non-verbal behavior of the characters contains no less information than verbal jokes or depicting comic situations. In the text of the novel, there are several types of “verbalization of nonverbal” contexts, in particular: duplicative (non-verbal parameters of communication confirm verbal ones); oppositional (non-verbal parameters of communication refute verbal ones, contradict them); substitutive (non-verbal component replaces the verbal one without opposing it); complementary (non-verbal component extends the content of the statement); clarifying (non-verbal component specifies the content of a separate part of the statement). Conclusions. The communication of the characters in the texts of comedy fantasy, in particular, Terry Pratchett’s novel “Men at Arms”, is similar to the context of communication among people in real life. The author’s depiction of the characters’ nonverbal behavior is the generation of new meanings as a result of the double actualization of nonverbal codes by means of a specific language, which is characterized by the transition of the addressee’s personal meanings to their embodiment in the meaning of language code units. In the texts of Terry Pratchett’s comedy fantasy, non-verbal components can enter into different relationships with verbal ones, that is, create different types of contexts with a non-verbal component: duplicative, oppositional, substitutive, complementary, and clarifying contexts.