Rhetorical factors serving to form a sub-text underlying form and meaning in Joyce`s dubliners

Abstract

273 SUMMARY This study considers the problem of how receivers arrive at the intended meaning in discourse within the larger context of literary communication. Theories of literary communication presuppose dialogue. Language users engage in constructive and intentional acts during the cognitive processes in reading and writing. Literary narratives are produced with specific intentions (to mean) and are received with specific intentions (to understand). The locus of interaction is the text. Within the writer- text relationship, the text is seen as a `semantic intention`, while from the text-reader perspective, it is viewed as a specific text type, i.e., the literary narrative with identifiable properties and rhetorical form. It includes, in systematic form, all the information with the help of relevant prior knowledge and experience, a `model of the world` in `congruence with the writer's intention`. In this sense, following Lerchner (1990), DUBLINERS, collection of short stories written by James Joyce, is treated as a `model -forming system`.