CONTEXTUAL INFERENCE IN ENGLISH LITERARY TITLES: FROM INITIAL EXPECTATION TO RETROSPECTIVE MEANING
Keywords:
literary title, implicit meaning, contextual inference, reader expectation, paratext, retrospective interpretation, stylisticsAbstract
The article investigates how the meaning of an English literary title is reorganized while a reader moves from first contact with the title to a completed interpretation of the work. The study treats the title not as a static label but as a compact paratextual unit whose semantic potential is activated gradually by context. A qualitative contextual-pragmatic procedure is applied to three cases
drawn from English-language fiction: Ernest Hemingway's In Another Country and Cat in the Rain, and H. G. Wells's The Invisible Man.
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References
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