Communication failures and ways to overcome it in the “teenage” stories by Asya Petrova

Asya Petrova is a modern St. Petersburg writer who is actively working in the genre of “school” story. Asya Petrova’s stories address an important question: why is it impossible or unsuccessful for a teenager to communicate with peers or adults? A related question: should a teenager distinguish between “own” circle of family / friends and a “wide” social circle of communication and, in accordance with this, choose a type of speech behavior? The choice of Asya Petrova’s works as a material for analysis is due to the fact that in most cases the writer finds for her characters the possibility of a positive resolution of conflicts; the finals of works are open to the future. Particular attention is paid to the story «Who says what – it doesn’t matter», since this work can be recommended to the teacher for a joint discussion with pupils in grades 6 or 7. The purpose of this article is to identify ways to solve the communicative failures of the heroes offered by Asya Petrova. The existential problems of the characters (the desire to “just say” and the feeling of the impossibility of this action) are realized in the same type of conversation situation. These situations mark the stages of plot development. The methodological basis of the study includes, in addition to the traditional system-structural concept of the artistic world of the work and the plot as part of the chronotope, the theory of the subjective organization of the narrative. Based on the concept of the dialogic word M.M. Bakhtin, methods of organizing the speech level are analyzed; in the study of errors and failures of dialogues, the theory of discourse formations of V.I. Tyupa is involved. The features of the genre of “school” story are taken into account. As a result, five stories by Asya Petrova are considered, offering several possible options for establishing communicative contacts between a teenager and people around him. The general invariant is the hero’s overcoming of isolation on himself, the emergence of a desire to help other people. In addition, the author declares the independence of the child’s personal statement, not subject to double communicative standards. The conclusions point to the significance of such a trend in modern teenage literature, which successfully combines psychologism in revealing the characters’ images and the author’s game strategies. The practical significance is seen in drawing attention to an actively writing modern author, who is still outside the attention of researchers in children’s and adolescent literature.

modern children’s literature, children’s writers, literary creativity, literary genres, school stories, communication failures, adolescents, adolescent conflicts