The literary text explanation pragmatics

The article is devoted to the problem of studying “explanation” in a literary text. The author considers the explanation as one of the subtypes of the type of speech “reasoning”, the logical basis of which is making an inference. In this regard, the pragmatic focus is oriented to the statement of causal relations without affecting the addressee. The research conducts an analysis of the literary text fragments, which illustrates the difference between explanation and argumentation as subtypes of reasoning. The explanation is based on a causal relationship between the phenomena. The argument serves to resolve any problematic situation, to confirm or reject any phenomenon. Explanation in literary speech, as opposed to scientific, relies on the personal or general human knowledge of the real world of the writer and reader, on the common ground of their presuppositions, and, therefore, performs a purely communicative function in most instances - to imagine the subject matter in the vivid and accurate way and to attract the reader to the interlocutors.