Semantics of Subtext: Modernist Dimension

Abstract

Modernist literary discourse structuring determines the interpretations of the "new style" – a system of means employed to refresh the manner of writing, focused on the inclusion of cognitively reformed semantic components into the idiolect paradigm. Subjective author's intentions aimed at text intellectualization, usually in the form of puns and linguistic games, subtextual shifts, innovative destructions, that are included in the context, become a part of a coding system, encryption of the said text, ambivalent meaning in the Author-Text-Reader system. The aspect of the text potential aimed at distinguishing its meaning is a component of deciphering and understanding of literary discourse as a linguistic and aesthetic sign.

Linguistic and stylistic means of encoding and encryption of meaning in the text creation system call for understanding of general characteristics of a potential reader as a participant in the text creation process. The sense-creating function is relevant to the idea of an author as a collective image that recreates a picture of the world, regardless of the language of an abstract individual. Under these circumstances, the subtext code appears to be a source of deep semantics at the level of subconscious thinking. This makes subtext functionality a cognitive level category, a phenomenon of semantic universalism. The subtext is seen as an obligatory component of a literary idiolect, a phenomenon of vertical coding, a product of an author as a bearer of subjective intentions, that becomes a collective homogeneous character.