Implicit argumentation and lexical means in E. G. Vodolazkin's novel "Lavr"

The subject of the research is the mechanisms of implicit argumentation in narrative art, based on the material of the novel "Laura" by Evgeny Vodolazkin. The work aims to determine how a literary text is capable of forming value and meaningful conclusions without direct authorial evaluations and extensive logical proofs. The main focus is on the linguistic tools that indirectly guide interpretation and create conditions for forming a specific understanding of events for the reader. Particular importance in the analysis is given to the lexical-semantic level of the text: the role of individual words, their contextual combinations, the recurrence of thematic and semantic fields, as well as the system of character names are explored. Archaic and religiously marked vocabulary, neutral descriptions of bodily states, the variability of referential names, and stable semantic oppositions are considered. Implicit argumentation is interpreted as a way of organizing meaning, where premises and conclusions are not directly formulated but reconstructed by the reader based on context and cultural knowledge. The methodological foundation of the research consists of methods of linguistic and interpretative analysis of artistic texts, including contextual-semantic, lexical-semantic, and discursive analysis. Provisions of the theory of argumentation, pragmatics-dialectics approach, and principles of careful reading of text fragments are utilized. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the interpretation of Evgeny Vodolazkin's novel "Laura" from the perspective of implicit argumentation theory and in identifying the lexical-semantic mechanisms that form the argumentative impact of the artistic text without direct evaluative statements. It is shown that the argumentativeness of the work is realized not only in the individual utterances of characters but also in the overall structure of the narrative – through the selection of vocabulary, recurrence of semantic fields, the naming system, and the opposition of key concepts. It has been established that archaic and religiously marked vocabulary, neutral descriptions of bodily states, as well as oppositions such as "time - eternity," "knowledge - faith," "speech - silence" form stable interpretative frameworks. As a result, implicit argumentation serves as a pervasive mechanism for shaping the value picture of the novel and activates the interpretative role of the reader.