Information on the thesis

The thesis focuses on the analysis of lingual expression of narrative perspective in
contemporary misery lit texts which represent a new genre of literary autobiography.
The thesis investigates the meaning-making potential of point of view (POV) and its
impact on discourse organization. As a result of this research the linguistic devices
indicating POV in narrative text were examined. It was defined that linguistic indicators
of point of view with pinpoint accuracy specify different subjects in the text and
demonstrate the divergence or convergence of narratorial and character points of view.
Semantic functions of POV were defined according to the B. Uspensky’s semiotic
model. His theory of POV based on a fourfold typology: ideological, phraseological,
spatio-temporal and psychological POV. On the phraseological level, there are two
basic types of modification of POV: the modification of the authorial text under the
influence of speech which does not belong to the author himself and that is, speech of
someone else: and the modification of a text belonging to a character under the impact
of authorial reworking, that signifies authorial speech. It is concluded that the less
differentiation is between the character (the phraseology of the described) and the
author/narrator (the describing itself), the closer are their phraseological POV. For the
functions of spatial POV, there are several alternatives: it can be intrapersonal and
suprapersonal; other possible options are the birds’s eye view (a panoramic viewpoint)
and sequential survey (from one detail to another). The principal choice in temporal
POV is between counting time chronologically ordering events from a narrator’s use of
his own time schema or character’s POV. Two basic options are distinguished within
psychological POV: either to structure the events and characters of narrative from as an
objective viewpoint as possible or from a deliberately subjective viewpoint, which leads
to the crucial distinction between internal and external POV. The fundamental question
for the ideological or evaluative plane is the POV the author assumes in the flow of
ideological evaluation and perception of the world described.
Narrative perspective in misery lit texts reveal the state of emotional pain,
despair, hopelessness, and are reflected in particular types of communicative situations:
1) problematic life situation presupposing the reaction of incentive (urge), 2)
problematic life situation presupposing the reaction of despair, 3) problematic life
situation presupposing the reaction of humiliation, 4) problematic life situation
presupposing the reaction of protest. POV as the main text-forming factor determines
the implementation of various communicative strategies (incentive, humiliating,
desperate, protesting) and tactics (request, demand, order, excuse, contrition,
contemplation, irreverence, resentment, latent offence) appropriate for the
communicative situations of misery lit texts.
Key words: point of view (POV), narrative perspective, focalization, narrator,
reflector, ideological plane, phraseological plane, spatio-temporal plane, psychological
plane, communicative strategy, tactic, lingual explication.