Graphic Method of Stylization of Children’s Speech and Modeling a Child’s Perception of the World in Literary Fiction (a case study of the novels ‘Room’ by E. Donoghueand ‘All the Lost Things’ by M. Sacks)

Abstract

The article discusses graphic techniques used in the speech of a child narrator in works of fiction intended for an adult audience. Imitation of a child narration in such works is a challenge for the author since the speech of a child character cannot fully correspond to the speech of a real child. Therefore, the child narrative in adult literature appears to be highly artificial and is perceived by the reader as a device. The analysis of scientific papers devoted to the speech of child characters shows that their speech is stylized as a child’s. Stylization implies that authors use a certain set of linguistic elements that correlate to the real characteristics of children’s speech, but at the same time can be artistically enhanced. Authors can stylize children’s speech at different language levels. The graphic way of stylizing children’s speech and modeling a child’s worldview is rarely distinguished and is called unconventional by some researchers. It can be used for expressing the intonation, marking new words and phenomena, communicating someone else’s words, etc. The article analyzes modern works in English where the narrators are children aged 5 and 7: Room (by Emma Donoghue, 2010) and All the Lost Things (by Michelle Sacks, 2019). In the chosen novels, the graphic way of stylizing children’s speech and thinking is used both as an independent and as an additional method. Independently, the graphic technique is used to mark words and phrases that are new, incomprehensible, difficult for the characters, words in another language, as well as someone else’s words in their speech. As an additional method, it is used to enhance other techniques and linguistic units that imitate children’s speech: personifications, onomatopoeic interjections, hyperbole.