Detecting markers of free indirect speech in English texts as a prerequisite for discovering a correlation of patterns in translation from English into Russian

Abstract

The article deals with the markers of free indirect speech in English texts. The study is aimed at examining the markers and introducers of free indirect speech and their specific role in creating textual interference. The methods include lexical semantic, stylistic, contextual, and comparative analysis. Since free indirect speech as a stylistic device is based on the interference of the narrator’s text and the character’s text, it is characters’ peculiar speech patterns that it is highlighted by. Although free indirect speech is primarily grammatically and/or lexically marked, other means, e. g. italics, may also be employed to mark it in the text. Grammatical markers encompass a wide range of markers which fall into two groups, morphological and syntactic ones, with the latter being more relevant in English as it is an analytic language. Nevertheless, some instances of free indirect speech (especially those representing perception, with the highest degree of textual interference) lack concrete lexical or grammatical markers entirely, so that contextual cues appear to be the only means to determine whether or not a particular text fragment should be treated as free indirect speech. That is why it is often difficult to recognize free indirect speech in the English original and find adequate ways to render it into Russian. Another difficulty arises from typological differences between the two languages in question, with their different sets of grammatical markers. Therefore, detecting markers of free indirect speech in English texts and comparing them to those in original Russian texts are the first step towards discovering a correlation of syntactic patterns in the two languages in question — and achieving a proper translation equivalence. The results obtained can provide a basis for future research in the field of translation from English into Russian, of which the goal is to provide a set of recommendations for translators of literary texts.

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