On the Problem of the Discourse Analysis of Literary Texts

Abstract

The essay addresses the key theoretical and practical aspects of
the problem of scholarly approach to the analysis of artistic texts (films). The
author aims to clarify the term "discourse" both with regard to its content,
origin and scope and with regard to the possibilities and prospects of using it
in analytical work with films. From the author’s point of view, the discourse
analysis can solve a complex of serious problems that inevitably arise in the
work with artistic texts.
Since in the work with film texts the discursive practices of analysis are
rare, or even sporadic, and the very concept of discourse is still being adapted
by Russian film theory, it is necessary to consider the term in more detail —
particularly, the conditions of its appearance in the humanitarian sphere and
the prospects of its use in the artistic sphere and analytical work. The purpose
of this essay is to summarize viewpoints which exist in the humanities regarding
the term “discourse” and to formulate the understanding of the term which can
be employed for the practical analysis within film studies.
The term discourse is considered in the essay primarily in the linguistic
tradition — in particular, in connection with Ferdinand de Saussure’s
dichotomy of language and speech; and then the author traces the gradual
departure of the concept beyond linguistics into a broad sphere of semiotic
activity. Modern semiotics, which grew up on the foundation of linguistics,
has carried out the transfer of a number of linguistic categories — such as
language, speech, text, and discourse — to other sign systems, regarding these
categories as universal and basic — among other things, as applicable to the
sphere of art. The essay aims to clarify the subject of discourse analysis and its
specificity in regard to other approaches, and to define a fundamentally new
position of the researcher taken in the process of discourse analysis in relation
to the artistic text.