Cognitive-stylistic and pragmatic aspects of semantic deviations in the short story “Fault lines” written by Barbara Kingsolver

The article is devoted to the pragmatic and cognitive stylistic analysis of semantic deviations in the short story “Fault Lines” written by Barbara Kingsolver. It goes without saying that in literary works a language tends to have immense meaning since the author has unlimited freedom to communicate his/her ideas in his literary works. This allows a writer to make full use of his creativity to convey his/her message towards the readers by applying his individual style. Semantic deviation is one of the linguistic deviations which is implemented when a combination of incompatible and illogical words violates literary norms of a language in an attempt to evoke a reader’s surprise, grab a reader’s attention, exert emotional effect and bring aesthetic beauty to a literary text. On top of that, very few investigations have been carried out to research cognitive-stylistic characteristics along with pragmatic characteristics of semantic deviations as key mechanisms of foregrounding and thus this can be an attempt to fill this gap. The language in use will be analyzed in an attempt to study “the meaning of language in relation to a context and of use and users”. Therefore, it becomes apparent that cognitive aspects and pragmatic aspects go hand in hand and in order to conduct effective research both aspects have to be and will be taken into account.