Vyacheslav Syssoyev Page 4 6/21/2019

4. Identifying the message of the text

One of the most difficult practical problems in text analysis is identifying the message of the text. When we speak about the message in connection with the critical linguistic analysis of an imaginative literature, we usually have the following definition in mind. The message of the text is the central idea or statement about life that unifies and controls the total work. It is the comment or statement the author makes about the problem with which the work deals as it necessarily and inevitably emerges from the interplay of the various elements of the fiction work.

“What does this belles-lettres style text mean?” “What is the author trying to say?” “What is the basic idea of the text?” These are questions to be answered at this stage of text analysis and interpretation.

The message or basic idea of the text is sometimes compared with the theme of a work of fiction. We use these terms without much discrimination, because it is not the aim of this manual to draw a borderline between purely linguistic and naturally literary terms, but to unite them in order to carry through text analysis and interpretation in the most efficient way.

To summarize all stated above, when we attempt to identify the message of a work of fiction we are attempting to formulate in our own words the statement about life or human experience that is made by the total work. This task is frequently not easy. It makes us plunge in the analysis of a number of various elements in their relation to one another and to the work as a whole. There is no ready approach to identifying the message of a text, because texts of different kinds and genres yield different messages in different ways.

Nonetheless, the following suggestions and comments may prove helpful in identifying the basic idea:

• It is extremely important in considering message to avoid confusing it with the work’s subject or situation. Basic idea shared in a text with its possible readership is the abstract, generalized statement or comment that the text makes about a concrete subject or situation. On the other hand, the basic idea of any text cannot be established unless we are first successful in establishing the subject or the work’s basic situation. On identifying subject or situation, we are in position to formulate a thematic statement about the text. Take the case of “Death of a Hero” by Richard Aldington. Its subject, young George Winterbourne killed during World War I or, broader, the so-called “lost generation”, is easily identified. The situation described in the Epilogue (a foregrounded part of the text) is the drab empty life of the war and post-war generation. Bearing this information in mind, one can propose and support the following idea. The message (central idea, theme) of this novel is a passionate protest against war, against the rotten order of things in the author’s country and his call for atonement.

• One must be as certain as one can that the established statement of message does the work full justice. On the one hand, there is always the serious danger of either understanding the theme by failing to discover its total significance or of overstating and enlarging it beyond what the linguistic elements of the text can be shown to support, and thus making the work of fiction appear more universally applicable than it is. On the other hand, there is a danger of not cognizing the full thematic significance of a text. The correctness of the deduced message in the example taken is proved by numerous hot denunciative digressions, pages of biting social satire, rich and expressive word-depicting, a song of lamentation for the dead of the generation that went through the horrors of war, the general tragic and appealing mood of this “jazz-band novel”.

• The test of any message that one may propose is whether it is fully and completely supported by the work’s other elements.

• The title (and the subtitle) that an author gives the text presents a particular focus or emphasis for the reader’s attention. Take the case of Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair. A Novel