Markeme analysis of F. M. Dostoyevsky’s writing

Abstract

The study aimed at establishing markemes dynamics and a markeme trajectory in F. M. Dostoyevsky’s works. Fifteen works F. M. Dostoyevsky wrote in 1846–1880 constitute the study subject of research. The purpose of research determines the objective of establishing markeme peculiarity of F.M. Dostoyevsky’s writing. Markemological approach to a literary text analysis relies on the method of markeme analysis and makes a research methodology. The consolidated list of F. M. Dostoyevsky’s markemes is a source for extracting integral markemes. The consolidated list of markemes consists of 15 markeme lists ranked in a descending order of markemes integral weight. Integral markemes analysis makes it possible to establish dominant (обстоятельство) and vice-dominant (впечатление) markemes and compare their dynamics considering the invariant rank of each markeme in Dostoyevsky’s works. The analysis results show that there exists a negative correlation in the dynamics of both markemes. It means that an increase/decrease of the invariant rank of one markeme takes place simultaneously with a decrease/increase of the invariant rank of the other markeme. The study of the markeme trajectory deals with three parameters: 1) a total number of integral markemes in the markeme list of each text, 2) the productivity of each text in producing new integral markemes and 3) the total weight of integral markemes in each text. The visualization of data based on the total numbers of integral markemes in each text demonstrates the division of Dostoyevsky’s writing into three periods: 1) 1846–1849, 2) 1859–1864, 3) 1866–1880. The analysis of the quantity of new integral markemes each of the studied work produced shows that the main sources of markemes are «Бедные люди» (16), «Неточка Незванова» (10), «Двойник» (6). The total number of their markemes makes 2/3 (64 %) of Dostoyevsky’s integral markemes corpus. Eight more works such as «Хозяйка» (5), «Дядюшкин сон» (2), «Село Степанчиково и его обитатели» (2), «Записки из мертвого дома» (4), «Униженные и оскорбленные» (2), «Записки из подполья» (1), «Преступление и наказание» (1), «Бесы» (1) produce the rest 18 markemes. Thus, the corpus of integral markemes in Dostoyevsky’s texts was fully developed by 1872. To obtain the markeme trajectory in terms of the total weight of integral markemes in each text the Index of Relative Text Appropriateness to an author’s writing is introduced. It allows stratifying F. M. Dostoyevsky’s texts into nuclear and peripheral. Further stratification of nuclear and peripheral works makes it possible to determine nuclear, medium and fringe works in his writing. The stratification shows that F. M. Dostoyevsky’s nuclear, or top works are novels «Братья Карамазовы» and «Идиот» and a story «Неточка Незванова».