PERCEPTION AND REPRODUCTION OF THE TEXT: POINT OF VIEW

Olha Sushkevych (Uman, Ukraine)

Contemporary world could be interpreted as the system of hypertexts where a human being is constantly decoding messages, produces some of his/her own. In a definite life situation a person is surrounded with a number of texts – TV programmes, books, neighbour’s talks and many others which form reality. A speaker is constantly trying to single out something of greater importance, something which really matters in the currant of information. Less meaningful aspects of the text are left without thorough consideration [2: 380]. A speaker can also render and interpret information in his/her own way.

But the question is how clearly can an addressee understand the text, its details and how he/she reflects such information in speech or another text? Is this process adequate? To what extent? And what is the role of the speaker’s point of view? To find the answer to all these questions it is necessary to single out the criteria according to which the point of view forms. They are speaker’s personal and psychological peculiarities, social background and relations, communicative role and position as well as interests and benefits from the message and essence of information. All these criteria predetermine the way a person realizes his/her “ego” in communication. Still consciously or subconsciously a speaker transmits not only personal point of view but also points of view of someone else – media, government, authoritative people, general public attitude etc. The processes of forming some point of view could be presented schematically:

Perception ReflectionPoint of ViewReproduction

According to this scheme quite objective facts can easily gain some subjective colouring in speaker’s understanding of the text. It is a complex process. People have sometimes conflicting – wants and needs when it comes to a definite matter. For example, growth of cities provokes different points view. The objective side of such situation is that cities grow in places that were once farmland. Highways cut through long-established neighborhoods. Old buildings are torn down to make way for more modern ones. Here are some points of view concerning this problem:

1.“To 34-year-old entrepreneur Alex Felix, whose restaurant Poa Poa is a four-year-old success story, Bagamoyo [an ancient town in Zanzibar] feels like “a ghost town on the verge of a major wake-up call”[…] and he welcomes the prospects of port-related construction. I’m confident that Bagamoyo is a city that is growing,” he says.”[3:15].

2. “Terri Place, a soft-spoken, pensive American who has lived in Bagamoyo town for 20 years and who directs The Baobab Home, a school and orphanage. […] “Will this private partnership [bio-fuel project] grant China too much autonomy? She muses. “Will the Chinese perhaps use a portion of the coast as a military base as they have in Pakistan” [3: 17].

To understand the attitude of the speaker to such change we should:

Recognize that different people have different points of view about the topic;

Articulate those points of view;

Understand whose influence was that if any;

Negotiate differences;

Evaluate who is more likely to benefit from change.

These aspects could be represented in the following table:

This example also clearly shows that a speaker can express his/her point of view only about those things he/she knows about and which are some part of his/her world (e.g. port nearby Bagamoyo).

Point of view is necessary and essential for a person: expressing ideas about some problem a person intends to reach some communicative goals – to persuade someone, to raise a problem, to entertain, to provoke or stimulate some action etc. According to Arutiunova N. D. “satisfaction of addressee’s presupposition” is an important condition for the effectiveness of the communicative act, thus the text [1: 358]. Correspondently point of view is an instrument which changes the original text. It undergoes transformations from perception to reproduction. In this process factual information may change as well as the style, logical structure and sense.

Personalization of textual information can be presented with the help of linguistic markers which help to express the point of view such as: I’m persuaded, I firmly/strongly believe, I think. The speaker can also present his/her point of view in a generalized form referring to someone else or someone in authority: Everyone met such things; no one doubts; it’s clear that; N wrote in his book that; It was mentioned in BBC etc.).

To conclude we should assume that perception and reproduction of a text are important processes in everyday human communication. A speaker becomes an active transformer of the information he/she perceives and reproduces forming some point of view. The latter is the essential constituent of personal or general ideas we express in written or oral form.

LITERATURE

1. Арутюнова Н.Д. Фактор адресата / Арутюнова Н. Д. // Изв. АН СССР. – М.: Наука, 1981. – T. 40. – Вып. 4– С. 356-367. – (Серия лит. и языка).

2. Руднев В.П. Энциклопедический словарь культуры XX века / Руднев В.П. – М.: Аграф, 2001. – 608 с.

3. Sea change comes to Bagamoyo// Aramco World. – Vol. 66, No. 2. – Houston. – P.15-17.