An apology of the literary canon in a linguistic study

The article highlights the principles of selecting practical material for a linguistic study aspiring to objectivity and states that in such a study orientation to the literary text is absolutely essential, as a solid corpus of literary texts is indispensable for describing complicated linguistic phenomena and mental structures standing behind them. The article puts forward the postulate that any serious study into the English language should be constructed on the English literary canon - a global textual corpus on the basis of which the greatest part of the educated speakers’ conceptual sphere is formed. At the same time, the article considers certain problems related to the Anglicist’s orientation towards the canon - its definition, limits, central and peripheral authors, the criteria of a literary work canonic status, arguments of those opposing any canonicity in literature, reconstruction of the canon in other cultures. The article also analyzes the cognitive aspect and tells about the key transformation of the English mentality, which gave rise to thinking in the terms of the time, cause-and-effect, and probability in canonic literature. The author of the article comes up with a principal conclusion: orientation to the literary canon in a linguistic study allows reconciling of linguistics and literature studies and including into the analysis non-linguistic semiotic systems as well as idiolectal systems of conceptualizing the world in literary works.