SEMIOSIS OF INTERPERSONAL CONFLICTS IN ENGLISH ARTISTIC DISCOURSE

Abstract

The current paper presents an overview of interpersonal conflicts in discourse area of character in
modern English fiction discourse from the standpoint of multimodality theory, pragmalinguistics, and
semiotics. In this respect semiosis is defined as the action of a sign, a dynamic process of meaning-making and meaning-interpretation realized through multimodal semiotic modes which collectively
construct the meaning, communicated in these situations. This constructing is proceeded with the help of
conflictives as emergent discursive constructs, the result of interactive constructing by means of verbal,
nonverbal and graphic semiotic resources functioning in different stages of conflict communicative
process. The linguosemiotic space of their realization is in the plane of disharmony of interpersonal
relations of characters and its semiosis is built on cognitive, semiotic, communicative, and pragmatic
specifics of conflictives as operational units of conflict discourse. Moreover, the appropriate inferences
require understanding of cognitive, psychological, social, and cultural aspects accompanying narration.
The aim of the study is also to establish a link between different approaches to the interpretation
of conflict communication development and methods of their research in modern scientific studies.
Multimodal nature of conflictives comprises several modes of multimodality for the analysis of conflict
semiosis in fiction discourse: verbal, nonverbal, visual, auditory, kinetic etc. These patterns of meaning
combination or meaning multiplication through different semiotic modes together construct the meaning,
communicated and interpreted in the situations of interpersonal conflicts in discourse area of character
in modern English fiction discourse. To achieve the objectives of research, a semiotic approach to the
paradigm of conflict discourse approaches is applied, together with the elements of conversational
analysis, multimodal discourse analysis, pragmatic analysis. The obtained results show the capacity of
the semiotic approach to the conflict studies to enhance the effectiveness of linguistic research in the field
of conflict studies.