A comparatively new branch of stylistics is the decoding stylistics, which can be traced back to the works of L. V. Shcherba, B. A. Larin, M. Riffaterre, R. Jackobson and other scholars of the Prague linguistic circle. A serious contribution into this branch of stylistic study was

also made by Prof. I.V. Arnold (3, 4). Each act of speech has the performer, or sender of speech and the recipient. The former does the act of encoding and the latter the act of decoding the information.

If we analyse the text from the author's (encoding) point of view we should consider the epoch, the historical situation, the personal political, social and aesthetic views of the author.

But if we try to treat the same text from the reader's angle of view we shall have to disregard this background knowledge and get the maximum information from the text itself (its vocabulary, compo¬sition, sentence arrangement, etc.). The first approach manifests the prevalence of the literary analysis. The second is based almost exclusively on the linguistic analysis. Decoding stylistics is an attempt to harmoniously combine the two methods of stylistic research and enable the scholar to interpret a work of art with a minimum loss of its purport and message.

Decoding stylistics is the most recent trend in stylistic research that employs theoretical findings in such areas of science as information theory, psychology, statistical studies in combination with linguistics, .literary theory, history of art, literary criticism, etc.

Decoding goes beyond the traditional analysis of a work of fiction which usually gives either an evaluative explanatory commentary on the historical, cultural, biographical or geographical background of the work and its author or suggests a kind of stylistic analysis that comprises an inventory of stylistic devices and expressive means found in the text.

Neither of these approaches seems quite satisfactory. The first kind of analysis is typically done by a literary critic and may tend to become an arbitrary or judgmental reflection of his personal esthetic or other preferences and tastes. Such critiques may be detached from the text and based on the critic's inferences of what he conjectures as the author's intention. Many authors resent critical analysis of this sort as an attitude but not real evaluation.

The other approach tends to pursue another extreme: a formal registration of the data of the text. It divests a work of art of its magic and poetry by a pragmatic and statistical treatment that dissects the text and explains but little.

Decoding stylistics makes an attempt to regard the esthetic value of a text based on the interaction of specific textual elements, stylistic devices and compositional structure in delivering the author's

message. This method does not consider the stylistic function of any stylistically important feature separately but only as a part of the whole text. So expressive means and stylistic devices are treated in their interaction and distribution within the text as carriers of the author's purport and creative idiom. By this the stylistic study of a literary work acquires a new, semasiological dimension in which the stylistic elements become signs of the author's vision of the world.

Decoding stylistics helps the reader in his or her understanding of a literary work by explaining or decoding the information that may be hidden from immediate view in specific allusions, cultural or political parallels, peculiar use of irony or euphemy, etc.

The term 'decoding stylistics' came from the application of the theory of information to linguistics by such authors as M. Riffatrre, R. Ja-cobson, F Guiraud, F. Danes, Y. Lotman, I. V. Arnold and others.

In a rather simplified version this theory presents a creative process in the following mode. The writer receives diverse information from the outside world. Some of it becomes a source for his creative work. He processes this information and recreates it in his own esthetic images that become a vehicle to pass his vision to the addressee, his readers. The process of internalizing of the outside information and translating it into his imagery is called 'encoding'.

To encode certain information an author resorts to certain means-meaningful units that are organized according to certain rules. The salient feature of this information encoded by the author is called the message.

The process of encoding will only make any sense if besides the encoder who sends the information it includes the recipient or the

addressee who in this case is the reader. The reader is supposed to decode the information contained in the text of a literary work.

However to encode the information does not mean to have it delivered or passed intact to the recipient. There are more obstacles here than meet the eye. In contrast to the writer who is always concrete the reader who is addressed is in fact an abstract notion, he is any of the thousands of people who may read this book. This abstract reader may not be prepared or willing to decode the message or even take it. The reasons are numerous and various.

A literary work on its way to the reader encounters quite a number of hindrances of all sorts - social, historical, temporal, cultural and so on. Many of these differences between the author and his reader are inevitable. Readers and authors may be separated by historical epochs, social conventions, religious and political views, cultural and national traditions. Moreover, even if the author and the reader belong to the same society no reader can completely identify himself with the author either emotionally, intellectually or esthetically. Apart from these objective and personal factors we cannot disregard the complexity of certain works of art. Many of them are quite sophisticated in form and content. Some are full of implications that create more than one semantic plane and may contain understatements, semantic accretion, or open-ended composition that makes the reader waver about the outcome. Others require of the reader a wide educational thesaurus and knowledge of history, philosophy, mythology or religion.

The readers will differ not only from the author but also from each other. They have a different life experience, educational background, cultural level and tastes

All these factors often preclude easy decoding and show how difficult it is for the message to reach the reader and be appropriately construed by him. The message encoded and sent may differ from the message received after decoding.

So the result may be a failure on either side. The reader may complain that he couldn't understand what the author wanted to say, while the author may resent being misinterpreted. A good illustration of the problem of mutual understanding is provided in M. Tsvetaeva's essay "Poets on Critics" in which she maintains that reading is co-creative work on the part of the reader if he wants to understand and enjoy a work of art. Reading is not so much a hobby done at leisure as solving a kind of puzzle. What is reading but divining, interpreting, unraveling the mystery, wrapped in between the lines, beyond the words, she writes. So if the reader has no imagination no book stands a chance (29, p. 274-296).

From the reader's point of view the important thing is not what the author wanted to say but what he managed to convey in the text of his work.

That's why decoding stylistics deals with the notions of stylistics of the author and stylistics of the reader.

5.2. Essential concepts of decoding stylistic analysis and types of foregrounding

Decoding stylistics investigates the same levels as linguastylistics - phonetic, graphical, lexical, and grammatical. The basic difference is that it studies expressive means provided by each level not as isolated

devices that demonstrate some stylistic function but as a part of the general pattern discernible on the background of relatively lengthy segments of the text, from a paragraph to the level of the whole work. The underlying idea implies that stylistic analysis can only be valid when it takes into account the overall concept and aesthetic system of the author reflected in his writing.

Ideas, events, characters, emotions and an author's attitudes are all encoded in the text through language. The reader is expected to perceive and decipher these things by reading and interpreting the text. Decoding stylistics is actually the reader's stylistics that is engaged in recreating the author's vision of the world with the help of concrete text elements and their interaction throughout the text.

A systematic and elaborate presentation of decoding stylistics as a branch of general stylistics can be found in the book of Prof. Arnold Стилистика современного английского языка. (Стилистика декодирования) so here we shall limit ourselves to the description of its most general principles and concepts.

One of the fundamental concepts of decoding stylistics is foregrounding. The notion itself was suggested by the scholars of the Prague linguistic circle that was founded in 1926 and existed until early 50s. Among its members were some of the most outstanding linguists of the 20th century, such as N. S. Trubetskoy, S. O. Kartsevsky, R. Jacobson, V. Matezius, B.Trnka, J.Vachek, V. Skalichka and others (20). The Prague circle represented a trend of structural linguistics and developed a number of ideas and notions that made a valuable contribution into modern linguistic theory, for example, phonology and the theory of oppositions, the theory of functional sentence perspective, the notions of norm and codification, functional styles and dialectology, etc.

The Prague school introduced into linguistics a functional approach to language. Their central thesis postulated that language is not a rigorous petrified structure but a dynamic functional system. In other words language is a system of means of expression that serve a definite purpose in communication. Their views exerted profound influence on stylistic research in areas of functional styles study, the norm and its variations in the national language, as well as the study of poetic language, i. e. the language of literature. It was for this latter sphere that the notion of foregrounding was formulated.

Prof. Arnold has highlighted various treatments of the term by different authors in her book on decoding stylistics but the essence of the concept consists in the following. Foregrounding means a specific role that some language items play in a certain context when the reader's attention cannot but be drawn to them. In a literary text such items become stylistically marked features that build up its stylistic function.

Descriptive, statistical, distributional and other kinds of linguistic analysis show that there are certain modes of language use and arrangement to achieve the effect of foregrounding. It may be based on various types of deviation or redundancy or unexpected combination of language units, etc. Arnold points out that sometimes the effect of foregrounding can be achieved in a peculiar way by the very absence of any expressive or distinctive features precisely because they are expected in certain types of texts, e. g. the absence of rhythmical arrangement in verse.

However decoding stylistics laid down a few principal methods that ensure the effect of foregrounding in a literary text. Among them we can name convergence of expressive means, irradiation, defeated expectancy, coupling, semantic fields, semi-marked structures.