Pragmasemantics of Metatextuality in Autobiographical Discourse

Abstract

This article explores the pragmasemantic features of metatextuality in the discourse of autobiographical narrative. Autobiographical discourse is inherently subjective and expressed through various modalities. Subjectivity is an ontological property of thinking, inevitably manifested in language. Here, metatextuality was defined as a unity of explicit metatextual elements and metapoetic meanings, given that the writer, producing autobiographical discourse, impregnates it with their personal perception of the creative process and aesthetic principles. The methods used include inductive-deductive reasoning, comparison and contrast, semantic analysis, and philological interpretation. Based on the analysis of Yury Olesha’s autobiographical book “Not a Day without a Line”, the main verbalizers of metatextuality (introductory words and phrases; inserted constructions; gradational comparisons and expanded metaphors; lexemes zhizn’ (life), pisat’ (write), and isskustvo (art), as well as their word-forming derivatives; precedent onyms; stylization of metapoetic fragments as monologues) were identified. The results obtained show that the pragmasemantic potential of metatextuality is determined by its alignment with the metapoetics of the writer’s autobiographical discourse as a form of personal, existential discourse.

Keywords

• autobiographical discourse
• linguistic identity
• pragmatics
• semantics
• metatextuality
• metatextual elements
• text and discourse space