Text from a functional communicative perspective: a linguistic analysis of Chekhov’s humoresque “My ‘her’”

Abstract

The article presents a theoretical framework for linguistic analysis of a text – Functional Communicative Grammar (FCG). Based on the assumption that any text is generated by the communicative intentions of the speaker, this approach focuses on the speaker’s time and space perspective in relation to the depicted situation, the plurality of subjects involved and the different statuses of these subjects within an utterance. The methodology allows the analyst to reveal the author’s tactics and strategy in the creation of a text and to point out the linguistic tools that help them achieve the desired effect on the reader. To demonstrate the framework’s potential, I perform a linguistic analysis of a short humoresque by Chekhov, using specific categories developed within FCG. Analyzing the semantics of predicative and non-predicative units, I generalize over the organization of the textual time, subject perspective and registers understood as communicative types of speech, and demonstrate how Chekhov creates the effect of deceived expectation at the linguistic level.