Language and Stylistic Aspects of Karel Čapek’s Journalistic Writing: An Analysis of Hovory s T. G. Masarykem through the Method of Textual Linguistics

The present contribution focuses on Karel Čapek’s Hovory s T.G. Masarykem to analyse its intrinsic structure by applying František Daneš’ model of thematic progressions (TP), ie. the choice and ordering of utterance themes, their mutual concatenation and hierarchy, as well as their relation to the hyperthemes of the superior text unit (such as paragraph, chapter, etc.), to the whole text, and to the situation. Thematic progression might be viewed as the skeleton of the plot. This contribution aims to identify the thematic progression patterns (simple linear, constant, with derived themes), in particular in the third part, focused on Masaryk’s thinking. Thanks to the identification of the thematic progressions, it is possible to ascertain the communicative intention of the author and to point out some formal aspects. Differently from the first two parts, in which the style is mainly narrative, in the third one the intention of Čapek is to reproduce the style of the president’s speeches. Putting in writing Masaryk’s thoughts, Čapek preserves the oral dimension and the stylistic originality of the speaker. Moreover, Masaryk himself contributed to the editing of the Hovory.