Communicative Strategies in Sergei Ochinyan’s Collection of Short Stories “Cossacks and Mongooses”

Abstract

Problem of genre nature of short novels by a contemporary Russian author Sergei Ochinyan is discussed. The relevance of the study is determined by the following factors: the genre nature of literary texts in some cases is determined by formal external features, but today the nature of this problem is such that it affects a number of related industries, so that the approach to solving this issue is relevant in interdisciplinary terms. Particular attention is paid to the theory and history of the novelistic genre. The author proceeds from the fact that in order to determine the genre nature of a text, it is necessary to rely on the theory of communicative strategies of their competences, reference, creative and receptive, which are formed by the narrative picture of the world and the conditions of eventuality. Object of study is the collection of stories by Sergei Ochinyan “Cossacks and Mongooses.” It is proved that the title and theme of the collection appeal to the work by O. Henry “Cabbages and Kings.” The results of comparative analysis of the texts of both authors using communicative strategies are presented. It is noted that the analysis of the texts, taking into account the communicative strategies, proves the belonging of the work “Cabbages and Kings” to the genre of a short novel, while “Cossacks and Mongooses” is a collection of stories, genetically ascending to an anecdote. It is concluded that only from the standpoint of the use of communicative strategies a genre becomes what B. M. Gasparov called “communicative contour of a statement.”

Keywords

• short novels
• story
• anecdote
• communicative strategy
• world picture
• o. henry
• s. ochinyan