Function of glossaries in texts of speculative literature

Abstract

The considerations of this article concern the role of glossaries in the texts of speculative literature. Speculative literature is defined as a super category covering all texts that do not describe reality, and are typologized within such literary genres as: fantasy, science fiction, horror. Because in contemporary communication practice, one can distinguish several ways of understanding the term glossary, this article assumes that the studied texts can be typologies as glossaries, and in speculative literature they take the new variant of the genre pattern. Hence, the tools of linguistic genology will be used for analyzes. The article describes that the examined glossaries are the closest to the model in terms of structure. In the macrostructure dimension, glosaries are a list of entries, arranged alphabetically and placed at the end of the book or in a separate volume, in the microstructure dimension, they contain different volume and graphically distinguished entry articles. The main difference is situated on the pragmatic and cognitive level, which is conditioned by the fact that, placed on the periphery of the text, they occupy a privileged area of the pragmatic dimension of the work. They fulfill both the prescriptive function typical of this type of speech, and the descriptive function resulting from modern communicative practice. Glossaries in the texts of speculative literature fulfill various roles in relation to the main text: from a dictionary defining the nominations of characters entered, toponymic names, terms, etc., to various comments explaining, for example, the nuances of the plot, the cultural or mythological perspective of the presented content. They are often constituted, in a sense, as a second narrative situated next to the main one in the main text.