ENIGMATIC SITUATION AND TEXT

Pavlova P. A.

This article considers the structure of a specific communicative situation of an enigmatic text production – the enigmatic situation. By analysing the compositional and structural characteristics along with the semantic organisation of enigmatic texts, the following components of the enigmatic situation are established: an addresser and an addressee, both of whom carry special pragmatic functions of a riddler and a guesser, cultural code, background knowledge and life experience of the communicants, a coded object, the image of which is verbalised in an enigmatic text consisting of a question and an answer part. Based on the results of enigmatic texts research, the term «enigmat» is introduced to clarify the terminology. The term refers to the answer part of the enigmatic text, following the logic of naming the coded object (enigmat) and question part of the text (enigmator). The material of the study comprised riddles in the German language.

Keywords:enigmatic text, enigmatic situation, enigmator, enigmat, enigmant.