Individual Style as a System of Correlations of Multilevel Characteristics

Abstract

The article investigates system relations in individual style, which is viewed as a set of specific features of linguistic means typical for a certain author. The attention is focused on the authorial metaphor occupying the central position in linguistic research, especially in cognitive linguistics. The paper deals with the analysis of metaphor in the individual style of H. Lonfellow, a famous American romantic poet. The goal of the analysis is to establish the parameters of the author’s cognition, to single out statistically relevant tendencies in the creation of the text imagery reflecting similarities and differences between the elements of mental picture of the world. Correlation analysis (Cole co-efficient) of multiaspect metaphor features has made it possible to reveal interdependence between semantic characteristics of lexis representing target and source domain with localization of these lexical units in verse line. As a result, we have found a number of statistically relevant interrelations, unexpected in accordance with common logic. These interrelations shed light on not evident tendencies in the structure of the authorial metaphor from the point of view of (a) structural and semantic characteristics of target and source domains and (b) structural parameters of target domain, on the one hand, and source domain, on the other hand. The obtained data can become the basis for the algorithm to model an authorial style, namely its most complicated aspect – imagery and its localization in the verse text.