6. Narrative modes.

The narrative mode (also known as the mode of narration) is the set of methods the author of a literary work uses to convey the plot to the audience. A writer's choice of narrator is crucial for the way a work of fiction is perceived by the reader.

Most writers present their story from one of the following perspectives called narrative modes: first-person, or third-person limited or omniscient.

Generally, a first-person narrator brings greater focus on the feelings, opinions, and perceptions of a particular character in a story, and on how the character views the world and the views of other characters. If the writer's intention is to get inside the world of a character, then it is a good choice.

Some first-person stories are told by characters who are more or less involved in the development of the plot but are not central characters. In some cases they are just onlookers. Such characters are called supporting viewpoint characters.

A third-person limited narrator is an alternative that does not require the writer to reveal all that a first-person character would know. In third-person limited, the narration is limited in the same way a first-person narrative might be—i.e., the narrator cannot tell the reader things that the focal character does not know—but the text is written in the third person. By contrast, a third-person omniscient narrator gives a panoramic view of the world of the story, looking into many characters and into the broader background of a story. A third-person omniscient narrator can tell feelings of every character. In this case we deal with third-person subjective narrative viewpoint. In contrast, the third-person objective employs a narrator who tells a story without describing any character's thoughts, opinions, or feelings; instead it gives an objective, unbiased point of view. This point of view can be described as a "fly on the wall" or "camera lens" approach that can only record the observable actions, but does not interpret these actions or relay what thoughts are going through the minds of the characters.

Some stories are told by multiple narrators as a writer may choose to let several narrators tell the story from different points of view. Then it is up to the reader to decide which narrator seems most reliable for each part of the story.

The stream-of-consciousness technique is also usually regarded as one of the narrative modes. It is used to portray an individual's point of view by giving the written equivalent of the character's thought processes. Stream-of-consciousness writing is usually regarded as a special form of interior monologue and is characterized by associative leaps in syntax and punctuation that can make the prose difficult to follow.

The analysis of the narrative modes is important to understand the process in which the author conveys their attitudes and ideas to the reader and creates a certain tone or atmosphere in the story.

IV. Stylistic analysis

Here you are supposed to analyze the linguistic means by which the message of the text is conveyed.

The analysis focuses on:

• the language register, or combination of different registers (formal, semi-formal, neutral, semi-informal, informal; high-flown, poetic, casual, colloquial etc.) employed by the author,

• syntactic peculiarities of the text (types of sentences prevailing, rhetoric questions, elliptical or inverted phrases, parallel constructions),

• special choice of the vocabulary (terms, dialectisms, slang etc.),

• stylistic tropes.

All these features are to be regarded not just for the sake of enumeration but in connection with their role in achieving the writer’s communicative goal. That is why the language of the text is to be analysed in terms of foregrounding.

Foregrounding is the practice of making some element of the text stand out from the surrounding words or images. Foregrounding can occur on all levels of language (phonology, graphology, morphology, lexis, syntax, semantics and pragmatics). It is generally used to highlight important parts of a text, to aid memorability and/or to invite interpretation.

"Foregrounding" literally means "to bring to the front." The writer uses the sounds of words or the words themselves in such a way that the readers' attention is immediately captivated.

The most common means employed by the writers is repetition. Our attention is immediately captivated by the repetition of the sounds of certain words or by the repetition of words themselves, or of some syntactic structures (parallelism) and we begin to analyse the reasons why the writer is repeating this particular sound or word or structure.

Another foregrounding device is deviation, which means departure from rules, maxims, or conventions. These may involve the language, as well as literary traditions or expectations setup by the text itself. The result is some degree of surprise in the reader, and his / her attention is thereby drawn to both the form of the text itself as well as its content). Cases of neologism, live metaphor, or ungrammatical sentences, as well as archaisms, paradox, and oxymoron are clear examples of deviation.

Both repetition and deviation are based on the effect of defeated expectancy: some units are either over-used ( = used more often than we could expect), or are used instead of other, more predictable units.

The use of a unit in one of the strong positions of the text can also be considered as a foregrounding device. Traditionally, these are the title, the prologue, the epigraph, the opening lines, the end – their great informative value is determined by psychological factors.

Foregrounding provides structural cohesion between the whole and its elements, enhances emotional involvement, provides retention of the information in memory, protects the message from misunderstanding, thus providing the basis for text interpretation.

The thorough analysis of stylistic features of the text, as well as of its structural characteristics, will enable you to define the author's position, his/her attitude towards the subject of the story and its problems, towards the characters and their actions, and finally to understand properly the author's message, the main idea of the story. Sometimes these attitudes and the message are expressed openly and directly (usually in the beginning or the end of the story), but more often than not it is revealed indirectly in the whole complex of linguistic and stylistic peculiarities of the text, in the author's characteristics of the characters, in the atmosphere created by the author in the story. Hence, the analysis of stylistic features of the story is of a principal importance for the proper understanding of its message.