«COUNTERTEXT» BY A.I.NOVIKOV: REVISITED THE CLASSIFICATION OF EVALUATIVE REACTIONS

Introduction

This work is a continuation of research carried out in the mainstream of text psycholinguistics and represents an experimental analysis of the process of understanding of different text types.

We conducted our own research aimed at identifying individual reactions and strategies of understanding by recipients that underlie the perception of textual information, during which several types of evaluative reactions were found that are characteristic of understanding the text of a glossy magazine.

To identify the peculiarities of perception and understanding of a glamorous magazine text, we conducted a psycholinguistic associative experiment using the method of constructing a «counter text» by A.I. Novikov [5], or «reactive text» in the terminology of N.I. Zhinkin [1]. It is to be recalled that the experiment was based on the hypothesis of A.I. Novikov about the «active role of the recipient, who does not just passively register the information contained in the text, being a «screen» on which the content of the text is projected, but constructs a «counter text» [5, P. 65], which is a «set of individual reactions» [8]. Each set of reactions is a manifestation of an individual strategy for understanding the text by a specific recipient.

The recipient's «counter text» is the construction of a set of reactions in the form of written utterances, recorded by the addressee himself, to the stimulus sentences of the original text. A set of such statements of each specific recipient - a participant in the experimental study, according to A.I. Novikov, contains the material that enables «to judge fully and accurately about the inner side of the process of perceiving a text» and is the subject of our research [5, P. 65].

According to N.P. Peshkova, using the given method «creates the possibility of representing the process of comprehending and interpreting what is reported in a form accessible to the experimenter» [9, P. 225].

To all reactions that make up the «counter text», A.I. Novikov gave his own definition by identifying and describing sixteen types of reactions [5]. Since the object of this study is the reaction «assessment», we present the author's original definition of the reaction given by A.I. Novikov: «assessment is a reaction associated with the assessment of what is said in the proposal» [5, P. 67-69].

The experimental procedure involved the selection of textual material, which was given to the recipients, accompanied by the instructions for implementation. All the recipients were female (aged 18-24) due to the gender-specific type of the text. The text from the periodical printed edition for women «Vogue» (October 2012) was selected as an experimental material, namely an article in which N. Vodyanova gives an interview about her collaboration with the shoe group company «Centro» [3]. This text was not difficult to comprehend, was not complicated by special terms, and the interview genre ensured the predominance of colloquial vocabulary. The text consisted of 16 sentences, each of which was numbered; illustrations were missing in the text.

As an assignment, we used the original instruction used by A.I. Novikov in his research [5, P. 65]. The text of the assignment was formulated as follows: «Please read the instructions:

While reading the text, make up your own «countertext». Countertext is everything that arises in your mind as a result of understanding the next sentence. It includes not only what is directly said, but also what is implied, given in an implicit form, indirectly, including various kinds of associations. In practical terms, in order for you to complete the assignment, you must:

1. On a separate sheet of paper, write down the number of the sentence.

2. Under this number, write down information regarding the interpretation of this sentence.

3. After compiling the «countertext», formulate the general meaning of the text you have read» [ibid.].

 Each subject received a piece of paper with the task and the text. The task of the subjects was to read sentences sequentially, without running ahead, and under the number of the corresponding sentence, to write down everything that arose in their consciousness in response to what was read, associations, interpretations and visual images, commenting, etc. After that, the subjects were asked to formulate the general meaning of what they had read without going back to the text or their answers.

The subjects were not limited in time, each worked at individual pace.

A characteristic feature in the perception of this text type, revealed as a result of the experiment, turned to be evaluative reactions of various types, namely, an evaluative opinion, an ironic evaluation, implicit evaluations of a positive and negative character.

Since we consider the assessment reaction to be complex, an attempt to define each of the components we have identified was made:

I. Assessment in general sense - as defined by A.I. Novikov is «a reaction associated with the evaluation of what is said in the proposal» [5, P. 68]. To this type, we attributed the answers characterizing the statement as «good / bad» and expressed mainly in exclamation sentences. For example, to the sentence stimulus: «Funds raised from the sale of shoes, that will go to all several hundred stores of the brand throughout the country, will be transferred to Vodyanova's Naked Heart Foundation», the following answers were given - 1) Well done! 2) Well, good! 3) Nice gesture! 4) What a kind girl! 5) Well done, Vodyanova! (the sentence number corresponds to the number of the recipient).

II. Evaluative opinion - a judgment expressing the evaluative attitude of the individual to what is expressed in the original sentence: «Each shoe has an elegant crown laid out with rhinestones» - 1) Unsuccessful idea, rhinestones look cheap and come off quickly; 2) I don’t like  rhinestones on shoes – they’ll fall off in a month, but they are still included in the price.

Since the differentiation of such concepts as opinion and assessment can represent a certain complexity, consider the following definitions of these concepts:

1) assessment – «an opinion about the value, level or significance of someone or something» [11];

2) assessment – «opinion, judgment about the qualities, character of someone, something» [7];

3) assessment – «attitude towards something, someone, compliance with certain norms and principles of morality (approval and condemnation, agreement or criticism, etc.)» [10];

1) opinion - a concept of ancient philosophy, implying «unreliable images of reality». The opinion expresses not the objective properties of the object, but the state of consciousness of the subject, his point of view, formed under the influence of the external environment, circumstances, and even prejudices [12];

2) opinion - an unreliable idea (as opposed to a reliable one - truth) arising from sensory impressions [13];

3) opinion - an expression of an idea about any fragment of reality that does not have a sufficiently complete and reliable justification; the result of sensory perception of random and changeable characteristics of the surrounding world [14].

As   can be seen from the definitions, assessment can imply, among other things, «opinion, judgment about qualities», as well as attitude in terms of approval or condemnation, hence the difficulty in distinguishing between reactions of opinion, assessment and evaluative opinion. I.V. Kirsanova considers the reaction of opinion to be judgments based on emotional principles, and defines the assessment as a positive or negative attitude of the individual. However, opinion can be accompanied by an assessment, thus the reactions are related to each other [2].

When analyzing the reactions of recipients, by «assessment» we mean a judgment that characterizes a statement as «good / bad», «beautiful / ugly», etc .; under «opinion» - an expression of a perception of a fragment of reality, which can contain both objective and subjective assessment; under «evaluative opinion» - a subjective representation that reflects the emotional, sensory perception of objects of the surrounding world.

III. An ironic assessment is a reaction in the form of an ironic statement with an assessment of what the sentence is about: «For some reason, it is still not customary for us to advertise our participation in charity events» - 1) Oh, really? 2) Yeah, right! 3) You don’t say- everyone is hiding!

IV. An implicit assessment of a negative nature, containing an implied, implicitly expressed negative attitude of the subject to what is said in the sentence: «We in Russia like to look bright in any situation and at any time of the day, I am like that myself» - Yeah, and in the village we all wear multi-colored galoshes?!

V. An implicit assessment of a positive nature, including an implied, implicit approval of what is said in the original sentence: «She turned out to be like that, girlish and fabulous, - Natalia Vodyanova shows me her creations: five pairs of high-heeled shoes, two - on a low, ankle boots and boots» - 1) I would like to see these shoes! 2) I wish I could try them all on!

As we consider these reactions to be the types of the assessment reaction, their percentage in total is quite high: assessment - 5.8%, evaluative opinion - 11%, implicit assessment of a positive character - 4.7%, implicit assessment of a negative character - 6.1%, ironic assessment - 3.5%. These several types of evaluative reactions, together account for 31.1% of the total number of reactions received [4].

Thus, the evaluation reaction takes the first place in frequency, which indicates the importance of the emotional-evaluative mechanism in the perception of information of this type of text.

Conclusion

The reactions of the subjects are secondary texts, the creation of which is «an explication of the projection of the text and its fixation by material means» [6, P. 83]. Under the projection of the text A.I. Novikov understood «mental formation, the product of the process of semantic perception of the text by the recipient, in one way or another approaching the author's version of the projection of the text» [ibid.]. Despite the individuality of each recipient, the quantitative indicators allow us to speak of the primacy of evaluative reactions that appear when perceiving a text of this type.

The general specificity of understanding the text of a glamorous magazine is due to the emotional and evaluative nature of mental activity aimed at understanding and interpreting it, which is reflected in all, without exception, «counter texts» of recipients. In the process of understanding the text of a glossy magazine, there is a tendency for the dominance of evaluative reactions of various types, expressed verbally through emotionally evaluative words and various constructions.