Distinctive features of the speech art form of small prose by T. Tolstaya: the speech art device of lexical-semantic syncretism

The article is devoted to the linguistic poetics of Tolstayas small prose. These texts were created in the end of the 20th century. Tolstaya is considered to be a neo-Baroque author. Neo-Baroque is one of the Russian postmodern direction (M. Lipovetskiy). Tolstayas small prose is characterized by expressive and complex speech art forms. These prosaic texts have such properties in their art structure as leitmotivity, associativity and syntheticity. Rules of art structure, level of the speech art form are realized due to a frequent use of artistic foregrounding elements (words), first of all, of metaphors and metonymies. The art speech device of lexical-semantic syncretism is in the focus of the current study. This device represents a simultaneous actualization in the artistic text of several lexical meanings of an ambiguous word. This art speech device is not specific to traditional European poetics. Genetically, it goes back to the east poetics. Researchers observe the use of this device starting from the texts of Modernism and Postmodernism. The art speech device of lexical-semantic syncretism reflects the idea of multidimensionality, ambivalence, ambiguity of the world inherent to the literature of neo-Baroque. This method generates artema-polysemant - a micromodel of rhizome - a nonequilibrium integrity of speech in the art form. Artema-polysemant, which has an ambiguous word as a language basis, allows the author to enter several meanings in the text simultaneously. The texts have complex semantic relations. These meanings may add one another, creating several levels of meanings in the text, or exclude one another, creating conflict or ambiguity in the text. Tolstaya increases the word semantic potential in the cultural and language area. It is done to activate knowledge about language, culture, mythopoeia, social history in the process of interpretation of the text. Due to this fact Tolstaya s prose becomes difficult for perception and deep in sense, opening the possibility of a huge area of interpretations. The structural and functional features of art speech device of lexical-semantic syncretism are discussed by example of linguistic poetic analysis of parts of the stories ''Plamen nebesnyi'' (Blaze of heaven, 1987), ''Somnambula v tumane'' (Sleepwalker in a fog, 1988), ''Peters'' (Peters, 1986), "Yorick" (Yorick, 1999). An attempt was made to determine the meaning of the art speech device of lexical-semantic syncretism in Tolstayas poetic system, and enter this art device in the wider fictional and scientific context.

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