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Introduction
Literature is a specific form of aesthetic perception of the world based on the beauty laws of the figurative perception and is a great idea and a means of moral education. Literature enlightens aesthetic feelings and forms its worldview. Fiction that embodies reality through literary means, at the same time, influences actively modifying effect to beauty and life, determines perfection according to ideal laws and changes. In this regard, Azerbaijani literature has a great history. History of Azerbaijani oral folk tradition dates back, at least, three thousand years, however, the history of written literature began to take shape after the spread of Islam in Azerbaijan (Akhmedova, 2020). This way Azerbaijan has been the motherland of such great writers as Barakaveyh Zanjani, Iskafi Zanjani, Khattat Nizami Tabrizi, Abu Nasr Mansur Tabrizi, Khatib Tabrizi, Masud ibn Namdar, Omar Ganji. These were revolutionaries in their time, for example by using
a system of metaphors typical of classical Arabic poetry, but at the same time mixing it with the colorful nature of their native lands developing their own style that gradually crystallized into a national identity (Shukurova, 2022).
In this process, women played an important role. As pointed out by Mandaville (2018), women’s participation in lyrical traditions can be traced to early support by Azerbaijani wealthy, educated women, and flowered in the nineteenth century and although fewer women than men became Ashiqs (poet-bards), there are good historical data indicating that women Ashiqs performed widely as early as the late eighteenth century - and oral tradition points to their participation in earlier centuries (Oldfield & Atis, 2008). Perhaps for this, Azerbaijanis perceive and celebrate women’s roles in all social and cultural spheres.
According to Vatanabadi (1996), to gain an understanding of the modern literature of Azerbaijan, one must bear in mind the colonial condition of Azerbaijan under the Soviet empire. Criticism of social conditions in Azerbaijan under Soviet rule were reflected in a variety of artistic and literary genres. For example, through historical novel, Azerbaijani writers attempted to retrieve and make accessible the historical knowledge that had been censored and distorted due to the politics of the times. In order to circumvent the prohibitions imposed by Soviet censorship, authors focused mostly on foreign powers' past invasions and occupation of Azerbaijan and on the heroic resistance of the Azerbaijanis against those powers, which allegorically represented the Soviets and their colonial domination over Azerbaijan. Thus, the historical novel above all provided an outlet for the construction of a national identity and became a source for the imagined postcolonial national community.
However, while independence and national identity has been a major theme in Azerbaijani literature, other literary fields have benefited from the genius of its artists and the traditional values of its land. In this sense, an example is the familiar style in language, which reflects the daily life, which is why it usually reaches the reader very quickly due to expressing their reality more directly. In this regard, it is known that after comparative historical linguistics (XIX century) and system-structural linguistics (XX century) the XXI century brought anthropocentric linguistics to science. Thus, the "dialogue" between pragmalinguistics, communication theory, the theory of speech acts and traditional stylistics and culture of speech that appeared since the middle of the last century contributed to the foreground of speech theory in the 21st century (Mardanova, 2020, pp. 3-5).
As Kidd and Castano (2017) highlights, the ability to engage with others on the basis of their subjective experiences is critical to living a normal social life. A growing literature emphasizes the importance of constructs such as empathy, concern for the thoughts and feelings of others (de Waal, 2008); and emotional intelligence, the ability to effectively integrate understanding of one’s own and others’ emotions. Research has revealed that familiarity in fiction authors, is a good proxy measure of actual reading habits, correlates with scores on a test of ToM (Mar et al., 2006), and that this relation is not explained by individual differences in agreeableness or a dispositional tendency to imagine oneself in fictional worlds (Mar et al., 2009). As Mar and Oatley (2008) argue, fiction supports rich simulations of social worlds, providing readers with opportunities to hone the processes underlying social perception (see the work of Koopman and Hakemulder (2015)).
Considering the above, the objective of this research is to analyze the family style in the language, specifically in the stories by Azerbaijani writer Afag Masud. The problem is addressed from the position of this modern paradigm, which is of particular interest to linguistics. In the stories of A. Masud, speech samples are taken directly from the practice of everyday communication, which allowed to determine the patterns of this practice, replica models that are becoming relevant in the context of speech culture. Although the features of the family style in the texts of the stories are taken from the practice of communication, nevertheless they represent a literary and aesthetic phenomenon. Therefore, the study of speech material from this point of view is always relevant and sheds light on the problem of "the language of the writer - the language of art."
To accomplish this the following methods were used: 1) descriptive; 2) pragmalinguistic; 3) linguistic and stylistic. Then, the theoretical basis of this research is the study of speech acts, in particular, acts of family speech from a logical, informative and aesthetic point of view were research by G.P. Grice, J. Leach, R. Lakoff, J.L. Austin, J.R. Searle are already considered classics. In recent years, in almost all works on rhetoric, this theoretical base is replenished with an explanation of specific language materials (for example (Kozyrev & Chernyak, 2021; Kuznetsov, 2007)).
Development
From the moment of its formation, the family style has occupied an important place in the history of the literary language of any nation. Compared with other functional styles of the Azerbaijani literary language, the family style has always been distinguished by the breadth of its sphere of influence and has played a decisive role both in the language of folklore and in the language of written literature of various periods. Note that the functional status of this style has also been determined. In this sense, there are theoretical provisions of related to the definition of the concept of “family and household style” (Mardanova, 2018).
The works of the Azerbaijani folk writer and playwright Afag Masud, who began her artistic work in the 70s of the 20th century, are of great interest in terms of the features of family and everyday style. The writer's work, which is rich and diverse, includes such genres as short story, novel, drama, essay, etc. From the point of view of the extent of the influence of family and everyday style on the artistic style, the stories of Afag Masud undoubtedly arouse greater interest. Literary critics point out that in her early stories, “events take place in a narrow space - in the family and household sphere. On this occasion, critical remarks were made to the author, but one should not forget that the family is an integral part of society, and the events taking place here are a kind of echo of events, spiritual and moral processes in society” (Jafarov, 2016).
For example, the heroes of the story "Night" (1986) - Talyb kishi and his old wife are talking at home on a winter night (Masud, 2012, p. 131):
“- Talyb, hey, Talyb ... Yes, my soul. ... - Something scary me. - What are you afraid of? - What kind of blizzard is this, eh, Talyb? Do you even remember that there was ever such a snowstorm in Baku?”.
The old woman is dying, she is afraid of everything, all the events taking place around her seem unusual to her, and such a mood forces her to intermittent, incoherent speech, to a disorderly expression of her anxiety. Talyb kishi is trying to bring his wife back to a normal dialogic life, but since she already thinks with the “logic” of another world, her speech is completely different (Masud, 2012):
"Try to get some sleep. - Yes, I sleep all day, how much can you sleep? - The more you sleep, the better. - Why is the onset of spring so delaying this year? March is already over, and spring does not smell. “May spring come, why are you in such a hurry” However, the “different character” of such a dialogue does not go beyond the limits of family style, for the reason that it is a direct continuation of the daily family life of an old man and an old woman who have lived together for many years. It is as if people are talking, having said the same thing to each other hundreds of times; and although the repetition of this conversation is known to both of them, it unnerves the old man, while the old woman, on the contrary, inclines to heartfelt conversations and reflections (Masud, 2012, pp. 135-136):
"Talyb... - Hm. - The wind seems to want something. - What does he want? - I do not know. ... Lie still, I will speak, and you listen. - Talk, Talyb, just talk a lot. And speak loudly”.
An old woman trying to extract hidden feelings, thoughts, sensations from the very depths of her memory and, at least in a chaotic way, put them in order with incomprehensible intuition, will leave this life talking. On the one hand, she demands silence from a desperate husband, on the other hand, she asks him questions, expresses emotions and actually does not give him the opportunity to utter a word (Masud, 2012, p. 137):
“…Talyb, why are you silent? Do not be silent, because when you are silent, I'm afraid?! It's raining... By God, it's raining... Can't you hear its noise?... Talyb, I conjure you, speak... Please, say at least one word... Talyb... Talyb... Hey, Talyb... I beg you, speak, I'm afraid... Talyb... Talyb... Talyb...".
Apparently, despite the incoherent speech, the emotional logic of the old woman in this regard is in place: she does not want to part with her husband Talyb and go into oblivion. In reality, this incoherent speech is self-defence, an attempt to fight for existence, for life. The old woman, who has almost completely lost her physical abilities, only has enough strength to talk.
On the other hand, the heroine of the story "Sparrows" (1990) is a little girl. The cold relationship between her mother, a writer, and her father influences her mood and state of mind so much that the child, left alone in the family, begins to talk to himself. However, this is an internal conversation. True, the author does not directly give the word to the little heroine, however, from the description of the relationship, the psychological state, it becomes clear that the child's impressions of the mother are the fruit of her imagination.
“When the mother was angry, her face would become distorted and fearful, terrified the child. With this terrible face of the mother, every day the girl dreamed. With this outlandish face, with bulging eyes, with iron steps, she approached her like a hurricane. And then, from the huge shadow of her mother, night seemed to fall, darkness covered everything around ...” (Masud, 2012, p. 137).
Of course, a child cannot express such a complex image in words; at the same time, there is no doubt that the “source” of the expression of this image lies within. The skill of the writer lies in the fact that she turns the amorphous ideas of the child into clear speech:
“Mother wrote something about sparrows ... She thought that maybe mom loves sparrows ?! Or, perhaps, her mother herself is a sparrow and therefore does not love her!... Or did her mother love her?! (Masud, 2012, p. 139).
Throughout the story, the child's thoughts, "extracted" from her inner world, turn into a jerky, but associative speech. In separate dialogues, the writer reflects the extremely unbearable impatience of her mother (Masud, 2012, pp. 144-145):
“With quiet steps, the girl entered and stood face to face with her mother:
- What do you want?... - Mother put glasses on her hair and stared at her daughter with faded eyes.
“I think I got sick,” the girl said, and, wrapping her arms around herself, “trembled,” just like the last time.
The mother sighed nervously and put her hand on her forehead.
“You don’t have a temperature,” she said and looked at the girl with a distant look.
- Maybe measure?
- No need”.
Thus, the situation that enhances the girl's imagination, her mental and psychological tension is the mother's desire to avoid a lively dialogue, which is so necessary for the family. The girl's rich imagination leads her to imagine her mother flying away with the sparrows.
The heroines of the works of Afag Masud, who are in the center of attention, are all, as a rule, impatient, one might say, nervous, with a peculiar speech. In Afag Masud's short story "She" (1992), the following dialogue is observed between husband and wife (Masud, 2012, p. 152):
“It was his wife. Arms on her hips, she stood in front of him.
- Get up and go to sleep in your bed.
- Why did you turn off the TV?
- You're not looking, so I turned it off.
- Turn it on.
I won't turn on...
Turn it on, I said.
- I won't.
- Fie on you ... With wolves to live like a wolf howl!
It turns out that this vicious, nervous "performance" of the wife is not at all accidental, there is a serious reason that drives her crazy. And soon the source of her hysteria and anger is revealed (Masud, 2012, p. 153):
“- You know what, call her, let her come and look after your children, and let her cook dinner! I have completed my work as a servant here!...
- Who is she? - he said and heard from behind the door the voice of his wife, hoarse with anger:
- You know it yourself!”.
It may seem that the expression "you know" is rather abstract and vague, but this situation, the experience of rich speech practice, at the same time, instead of a specific explanation of "Who is she?" blaming the other party through such general information reinforces the emotional impact of this expression. The main thing is that although the expression “you know” is not an invention of the author himself, it is used in such a successful context that this stylistic element of the family style acquires artistic and aesthetic value.
Family and domestic relations, of course, in all societies are regulated and ordered by certain moral rules, canons, and these rules, canons also affect the quality of family and everyday style. However, researchers note that Afag Masud is not moralist, but an analyst.
There is a pure literary space in which neither any moralism nor spiritual and moral pedantry can interfere; and his morality, morality come from human nature, the subconscious, not deformed under “social” pressure” (Jafarov, 2016, p. 62). This “creative method” of the writer forms a peculiar model of looking at the reality of family and domestic relations, and this model leads to completely different manners in relation to family and domestic style.
For example, in Afag Masud's story “She” there is such an episode: “Her son in night pajamas stood on the bed and, looking at him guiltily, rubbed his eye with his fist (Masud, 2012, p. 154):
- Where's mom?
- Why do you need her? Sleep.
- My stomach hurts ... - the child whined plaintively.
- Come to my arms.
He bent down and tried to lift the child from the bed, but the child ran to the other end of the bed and covered his face with his hands.
“No, let mom come,” he said, and this time he started crying”.
As you can see, in the story “Sparrows”, in the dialogue between mother and child, the indifference of the mother, who is completely immersed in her daily work (writing stories) and who has forgotten about her daughter in need of care, even avoids simple communication with her daughter. In the story “She”, the child (boy) refuses fatherly care, in a broad sense, from communication and wants only his mother. In both cases, the writer conveys the desire of the child precisely by “childish speech”, i.e. without any "literature". In literature, the assumption of such “prosaic” pettiness can be considered unaesthetic, but for the style of Afag Masud (it should be taken into account that we are talking about a writer sensitive to everyday relationships), this is not only quite aesthetic, but at the same time it is an emotional means. creating a more perfect image as a hero.
N. Jafarov (2016, p. 54) writes: “The multidimensional psychological analysis of family relations, in particular, the relationship between husband and wife in the stories of Afag Masud differs significantly from the traditional (and national!) analysis in the literature and is presented in an unusual pose or perspective”. This feature is manifested in imaginary and real dialogues, disputes between husband and wife, in their mutual reproaches, agreement or discontent. In the short story "Catastrophe" (1988), one of these "poses" or angles is as follows (Masud, 2012, p. 179):
“Why are you sitting here?
- ...
- What are you waiting for?
The husband shrugged angrily.
- Nothing.
- Why aren't you sleeping?
- ...
- You're sick, aren't you?
- Why are you sick?
- Do you feel sick when you see me?
The husband took a deep breath and turned away wearily.
“It starts again…”.
A husband who is subjected to mental and psychological "pressure" from his wife, who does not know how to behave in response to her senseless, aimless questions, finally understands her feelings and desires. The writer with a peculiar skill shows the source of this dialogue, the fact of which it is a semiotic sign (Masud, 2012, pp. 179-180):
- Father died!!!
It was the husband who shouted. His voice echoed in the silent darkness and seemed to reverberate throughout the street.
The kids were voicing...
Having somehow calmed down and put the children to bed, she thought that every spring begins with this... May this spring be cursed!
The influence of family and everyday style on the artistic style is observed not only in stories, but also in novels and dramatic works by Afag Masud. For example, in this regard, of particular interest is her play "At the Threshold" (2005), written based on her short story of the same name (2003). In general, dramaturgy, like stories, just as vividly reflects the family style (Mardanova, 2020, p. 186).
In one of his interviews, Afag Masud says: “To be honest, it never occurred to me that I would someday write a stage work ... I had to give up many feelings and sensations, experiences that were supposed to turn into events and dialogues, but which did not fall into the stage language. So, the play "At the Threshold" was created. This is how my transfer from prose to drama took place” (Masud, 2012, p. 315).
Although in this play the relations of the characters are connected with socio-political problems, nevertheless, here, to a large extent, there is an appeal to the family and everyday style.
“Saida (falls on her knees in front of the bed and cries): Grandfather, grandfather, grandfather, this (points to the writer standing behind her) Sayad, our Sayad ... The daughter of our neighbor teacher Soltan. Do you remember?...
Old man (ignoring Saida): Folders! Missing grandma! Family chronicle! ... I told you, but you did not believe. You have ruined me (suddenly addressing the audience in a low voice): She is not one of those whom you have seen!... She is a terrible creature... I have never seen such people even in the battles of Mozdok...
Saida (To the Writer): She won't know.
Writer. He knows, he knows me very well. By the rustling of my cloak, by the scent of my perfume…” (Masud, 2012, p. 372).
Finally, in the play "At the Threshold", the family style not only serves to create a linguo-poetic panorama of family relations, but also in general allows you to look at the "philosophy" of social life of a particular period, full of contradictions, precisely through the "prism" of this style.
Conclusions
In accordance with the texts analyzed, it can be said that in the language of A. Masud's stories, the elements of family style are based directly on the practice of Azerbaijani family and everyday communication (in particular, on the practice observed in Baku). Model-manners are transmitted, as a rule, in the "telegraph style". Also, the speech situations in A. Masud's stories show that both "semantics" and "syntactics" are directly dependent on "pragmatics" or the speaker's attitude to the linguistic sign. Neither "semantics" nor "syntactics" exist by themselves; it is a relation between the speaker and the sign, largely dependent on the will of the former. However, this dependence is in any case associated with norms that place the speaker in certain situational neuropsychological frameworks; traditional linguistics often erroneously considers this to be an active speech phenomenon. In addition, it was shown A. Masud as a realist (modernist); her stories creates a linguo-stylistic effect, bringing the practice of the urban language of family style in line with the text, although in the literary tradition of the Soviet period, Azerbaijani writers were more "literary", more "concrete" and even more "tactful".
This research was motivated by our believe that the study in the pragmalinguistic aspect of the elements of family and everyday style in the works of writers who know the life of people and society well will allow us to come to several interesting conclusions. For example, what is dictated by mental features in a speech situation?; and what is the subjectivity of the will?; why at the present stage "telegraphic style" is replacing normal (detailed) speech?; and what is the difference between the manners of the family style in the literary text of the writer and the writer, etc.?
