Chapter VII

7.2. THE FACTOR OF THE ADDRESSER AND ADDRESSEE
The addresser (author, sender, speaker) and the addressee (recipient, reader, listener) are the main constituents of discourse though explicitly
they are not presented in the text. The addresser is a creator of the text, which refl ects his views, attitudes, evaluation, world outlook. The addresser is realized in the text through the communicative aim, and strives to make it recognizable for the addressee. Besides, he has an intention to exert a certain infl uence on the addressee. In literary communication, viz. in fi ction, the addresser is represented in the “author’s image”. As many scholars state, the author of the literary work expresses not only the object of cognition, but also his personality. Literary communication presupposes actualization of all spiritual and practical abilities of a personality, his life experience and sophistication. The notion of the “author’s image” was introduced by V.V. Vinogradov who claimed that the “author’s image” is a focus, which combines all the parts of the work into a unity. In the fictional text the author’s image may have an explicit expression, but more often it is implicit. There are many ways of expressing the author’s image, including the plot and composition. All the compositional forms of the author’s speech (description, narration, reasoning) with different degrees of explicitness present the author’s individual viewpoint. One of the powerful means of asserting the author’s position is a system of stylistically marked units employed in the text. Among them the role of imagery should be particularly emphasized. Indeed, image-bearing stylistic devices are used in the text to express evaluative, subjective attitude of the author towards the things described.
So, the factor of an addresser presupposes that cultural context including literary, social, political data should be involved in discourse analysis. Only under such circumstances can a satisfactory account of the text, and an adequate interpretation of the author’s intention be achieved.
No less important in discourse analysis is the factor of an addressee. It is the addressee who indirectly predetermines text construction, the choice of words and structures. To achieve understanding the addresser should take into account all the parameters of a potential addressee, his social and professional status, educational level, background knowledge and so on. Certainly, the information about the addressee is rather relative. There are texts oriented to a certain reader. For instance, literature for children or special texts. At the same time there are texts not intended for a concrete reader, such as newspaper articles, brief news information, announcements and so on. In other words, texts of mass media communication. In contrast to such texts, lite rary communication might contain texts designed for an “intelligent reader”,
who possesses enough background knowledge. Thus, the novel by J. Fowles “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” requires the reader’s cultural competence and a certain educational level since it contains lots of quotations, allusions, references, philosophical meditations.
It should be noted that the factor of the addresser/ addressee in literary discourse, unlike other types of discourse, is characterized by some peculiar features conditioned by the fact that there are two types of the addresser: “addresser – writer”, and “addresser – personage”, and the two types of the addressee: “addressee –reader” and “addressee –personage”. All this is indicative of a complex system of implicit relationships between the author and the reader, and a multifold communicative structure of literary discourse.