Genre and Stylistic Features of the Modern Audiobook

Abstract

Modern technological conditions make it possible to create, quickly replicate and use audio books conveniently. Audio books are one of the fastest growing segments of the global publishing market. Informative issues of creating audio books, not technological ones, are in the research focus of the article. The content of an audiobook is a voiced text that refers to the “auditory literature”. Assessments of the quality of the auditory literature are polar. On the one hand, it is considered secondary to the original literary text; on the other hand, it is a self-contained artistic phenomenon with its own aesthetic nature. In this article, an audiobook is considered precisely in the aspect of its artistic value, which is highlighted when speaking about the genre nature of the voiced text. The genre features of the voiced text in this study are identified taking into account the communicative features of its formal-stylistic features. The communicative nature of the audiobook genre is associated with two types of reading, which reflect the opposite positions of the two participants in communication. On the one hand, this is an expres-sive reading aloud, which can also be defined as staged reading. Genetically, this type of reading is associated with public performances of artists and initially assumed live reading. Further, this type of reading is transformed into the genre of radio plays, called “theater at the microphone”. In modern communicative practices of creating and repli-cating audio content, including one related to the actor’s readings of works of art, there is no binding to time and place. On the other hand, this is auditory reading, a modifica-tion of which is audio reading in modern technological conditions. If auditory reading is the first reading practice of a child mastering books from the voice of a parent, then audio reading is the choice of an adult who can read. The acoustic representation of a literary work is associated not only with the performance of elementary technical characteristics of sound, but also with the introduction of a certain aesthetic value into it. The creative translation of a literary text from verbal to acoustic should preserve its value in the aesthetic plane, without reducing it to a purely pragmatic one. Actualization of the aesthetic value of an audiobook outside of its paper format is associated with the principles of its directing and editorial preparation – the principles associated with the implementation of the stylistic characteristics of the genre form of an audiobook. Translation of a verbal literary text into an audio one is carried out as a result of comparing reading a book to dramatic action. In this case, the forming element of the genre becomes the sounding text itself. In the case of audio books, the reader’s voice as a performer’s instru-ment and the musical noise accompaniment of the text read is a style-forming genre element. The article traces the publishing strategies for the embodiment of the formal-stylistic features of the audiobook genre in the context of modern audio cultural practices.