Multimodality as a feature of the author’s mind style in the descriptive register of an English literary text (based on J. Steinbeck’s literary works)

The study discusses multimodal perceptual situations presented in a literary text as a feature of the author’s mind style. The perceptual component of world perception is considered to be the result of unique perceptual experience, thus it is argued that the perceptual component of the text structure reflects the mind style of its author. The analysis of the situation of perception provided in the paper is based on the concept of speech registers. A speech register implemented in a text appears as a model of the speaker’s worldview that determines the language means used in the text in accordance with the communicative situation, and vice versa, makes it possible to identify the features of the perception of reality based on the lingual means used by the author. The research is based on data obtained from a number of J. Steinbeck’s literary works totaling 830 pages. The research methods used include componential, contextual, and linguo-stylistic analysis. The analysis prompts the following conclusions: multimodality within a literary text is conveyed through the use of a variety of lexical, phonetic, syntactic lingual means as well as expressive means based on conceptual metaphors with visual, auditory, olfactory, and tactile semantic components, thus evoking corresponding planes of perception. Perceptual images depicted in the descriptive register help convey the ideas, the topics raised in a literary work, serve as a means of text composition, and create a cinematic effect within the text. The abovementioned testifies to the distinctiveness of the author’s mind style, which manifests itself in the representation of perceptual experience through various modalities simultaneously, in synesthetic metaphors, multimodal presentation of the results of perception by visual submodalities.