General principles of discursive thematisation of English literary texts

2022 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 17K02831
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: English linguistics
• Research Institution: Kansai Gaidai University
• Principal Investigator: Kikuchi Shigeo 関西外国語大学, 国際文化研究所, 研究員 (70204831)
• Project Period (FY): 2017-04-01 – 2023-03-31
• Keywords: discourse theme / discourse rheme / thematization / addresser / pragmatics / information structure / author's implication / stylistics

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study has attempted to show that the information structure conceived at the level of sentences also exists at the level of fictional texts. In the past, research has started at the level of sentences and, by studying the connections between sentences, has expanded to the level of discourse. However, it has not been recognised that literary texts, which are fictional speech acts, have the same semantic structure as sentences, since they are produced from the same linguistic acts as sentences. Therefore, this study focused on the theme-rheme structure that exists in sentences and tried to discover it in the fictional context (=text).

Free Research Field

文学語用論

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

本研究は、言語学においてsentenceレベルで研究されていた情報構造の枠組みを、虚構の文学textにも適用することで、textレベルでもthematizationの構造が存在することを証明することを目的としていた。従来の研究は自然言語に限定されていたため、文学textへの応用は本研究が初めてである。本研究では文学text中の文脈においてtheme-rhemeの構造を発見し、作者の意図を探ることを試みた点において、本研究は言語学と文学研究の間をつなぐ研究である。