The study aims to characterize the idiostyle of titles as semantic dominants of the text in the aspect of cognitive poetics. We hypothesize that the title is a dynamic text construction, an interactive means of representing the poetic picture of the world, a codifier of the concept sphere of the lyrical cycle and included poems. Continuous sampling was used to select 84 entitled poems by L. N. Andersen included in the collection “Alone on the Bridge”. The focus was made on stylistic features of the titles and their cognitive effect. The titles were analyzed using the instruments of descriptive statistics, grammatical analysis involving identification of morphological dominants and determination of functions of grammatical categories objectified in artistic discourse, stylistic analysis of artistic expressive means and figures of speech represented in the titles, linguistic-cognitive analysis explicating knowledge structures conceptualized in the titles as components of the poetic picture of the author's world. As a result, it was shown that the titles of lyrical cycles and individual poems have structural functionality and aesthetic significance, as well as wide cognitive potential conceptualizing sociocultural motives of memory, loss of homeland and friends, wanderings around the world. The study also found that the titles manifest the text categories of imagery, modality, estimation, intertextuality, informativity. The titles were characterized by syntactic and semantic compression and evocativeness making it possible to decode the author’s communicative-pragmatic strategies and intentions correlating with the traditional values of the Russian national culture.
Ekaterina V. Ilyina (Wed,) studied this question.