Extratextual information as an integral part of literary communication

The present research focuses on the identification of the function of extratextual information within the scope of interaction of the chief participants’ (the author and the receptor) in the course of literary communication based on William Saroyan’s culturally determined stories. The category of information, specifically extratextual one, becomes of significant importance for correct understanding of the author’s conceptualization of events described in the text, creating a transcultural space of two cultures’ interaction, which respectively determines the levels of extratextual comprehension of such texts. W. Saroyan’s specific manner to reproduce the actual reality requires a specific type of relations with the readership and the communicative model of this interaction comprises several constituents: the social environment, which is determined by the local American community he lived in and the cultural (national) circumstances of his native Armenian sources. Due to the historical, ethnic and social conditions his world vision deviates from an ordinary worldview. Besides, the universal cultural concepts are transformed into cognitive primitives, which determine a different world conceptualization according to the schema “self/native” – “other/strange”. The extratextual information respectively becomes of vital importance for two parties (the author and the reader) to correctly coordinate the communicative act, which will develop within the cognitive schemas “I know and I understand” or “I do not know but I guess”. Otherwise, it will develop according to the schema “I do not know and I do not guess”. The analysis was done within the frames of cognitive-discursive, contextual hermeneutical and narrative methods of analysis.