The theory of Information as one of the cornerstones of Decoding Stylistics

для достижения наиболее полного и глубокого понимания его, исходя из структуры этого текста и взаимоотношений составляющих его элементов.
Под декодированием понимается восстановление сообщения на основе знания кодовых комбинаций. Кодом называется такой набор значимых единиц и правил их соединения, или фиксированных ограничений для их соеди­нений, который позволяет передавать некоторые сообщения».
И.В. Арнольд,
Теоретические основы стилистики декодирования
«Термин «стилистика декодирования» удобен потому, что показывает на связь этого раздела стилистики с теорией информации и на тот участок процесса общения, который является его предметом, а именно на участок «текст — читатель». Использование этого термина не означает, что у стилис­тики декодирования нет связей с другими разделами стилис­тики, поэтики, теории и истории литературы. Напротив, эти связи существуют и играют основную роль в установлении кодов. Так, например, вся система известных традиционной стилистике тропов и фигур может рассматриваться либо как набор кодовых комбинаций, либо как отдельный самостоя­тельный код».
И.В. Арнольд,
Теоретические основы стилистики декодирования

Decoding Stylistics

The use of the approaches from Information Theory, which is an exact science, is another example of inter-disciplinary connections in contemporary linguistics. Information Theory as such is a branch of applied mathematics and electrical engineering involving the quantification of information. Information Theory was developed by Claude E. Shannon to find fundamental limits on signal processing operations such as compressing data and on reliably storing and communicating data. Since its inception it has broadened to find applications in many other areas, including statistical inference, natural language processing, cryptography generally, networks other than communication networks — as in neurobiology, the evolution and function of molecular codes, model selection in ecology, thermal physics, quantum computing, plagiarism detection and other forms of data analysis.

Decoding Stylistics

Applications of fundamental topics of Information Theory include lossless data compression (e.g. ZIP files), lossy data compression (e.g. MP3s and JPGs), and channel coding (e.g. for DSL lines). The field is at the intersection of mathematics, statistics, computer science, physics, neurobiology, and electrical engineering. Its impact has been crucial to the success of the Voyager missions to deep space, the invention of the compact disc, the feasibility of mobile phones, the development of the Internet, the study of linguistics and of human perception, the understanding of black holes, and numerous other fields. Important sub-fields of Information Theory are source coding, channel coding, algorithmic complexity theory, algorithmic information theory, information-theoretic security, and measures of information.

only in Linguistics but also in Semiotics, in the Theory of Information, and many other disciplines.  Information Theory is actually a branch of mathematical physics that has emerged to meet the demands of modern engineering but very soon proved to be of very general usefulness. Its principles, ideas and notions are applied in many very different fields. It is not only the basis of cybernetics but became indispensable in biology and semiotics, economics and warfare, medical sciences, psychology and last but not least linguistics.
It is necessary to emphasize and remember that Decoding Stylistics is interested not in the engineering possibilities of Information Theory, but in its philosophical and heuristic possibilities and does not cast out intuition, i.e. direct perception of art.

linguistics were not linguists but mathematicians – those who created Information Theory. It was Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver in their classical book "The Mathematic Theory of Communication", Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1949, the work focused on the problem of how best to encode the information a sender wants to transmit, who pointed out that the analysis of communication will pave the way for a theory of meaning. In this fundamental work they used tools in probability theory, developed by Norbert Wiener, which were in their nascent stages of being applied to communication theory at that time.

2.2. The Process of Communication

Leech, V.V. Ivanov, I. Levy, V.A. Zaretsky, A.M. Kondratov, J.A. Filippev, J. Darkshire

I.V. Arnold

as information, message, code, communication, channel, encode, decode, feedback, redundancy and some others that are important for DS.
Their importance and value for us depend on the possibility they give to see common features in apparently different phenomena, make new powerful generalizations and formulate laws common to different branches of knowledge in a unified system of terms and notions. This permits very different and distant branches of knowledge to cooperate in development. As an example of this cooperation one might consider the scheme of communication offered by Claude Shannon and some of the many adaptations of this scheme by linguists. 

by Claude Shannon

following form:

2.2. The Process of Communication

or means of communication but the process itself:

2.2. The Process of Communication

to certain expressions, arrived at through investigation of definitions and making of literal interpretations. Non-encoded content are those meanings that are understood beyond an analysis of the words themselves, i.e., by looking at the context of speaking, tone of voice, and so on. Truth-conditional content are whatever conditions make an expression true or false. Non-truth-conditional content are whatever conditions that do not affect the truth or falsity of an expression.

possible varieties of expression:
1. Conventional Implicature – when an expression has encoded content, but doesn't necessarily have any truth-conditions;
2. Conversational Implicature – when an expression does not have encoded content, but does have truth-conditions (for example, in use of irony);
3. Utterances - when an expression has both encoded content and truth-conditions

2.2. The Process of Communication

theory became of fundamental importance in all disciplines involving problems of communication, language and meaning. Cl. Shannon gave a new interpretation to such notions as "information" and "message". In the above scheme:
- the information source is where the message to be sent is selected from an array of possible messages;
-    the transmitter encodes the message into a signal;
-   the signal is sent through a communication channel;  
-    the message is received and decoded by a receiver;
-    there is a destination, i.e. addressee, analogous to the source which makes use of the signal;  
-   undesirable but inevitable variations in the signal due to various external causes affecting transmission are called noise.

information and the linguistic meaning should not be confused.
The non-semantic information is expressed mathematically in terms of probability (p) and enthrophy (x). Or, in other words, it is determined by the probability of the event. But we are interested in the essence of this relationship from the point of view of philosophy, of the theory of reader’s response.
The amount of information in a piece of language is related to the predictability of one linguistic choice from another. Formulated in the terms of the theory of reader’s response, information is the trace left on one object of reality by the influence of another object of reality. Among the many different choices the writer has to make in the stage of selection, note the selection of genre suitable for this or that subject-matter and idea. He has to decide when he encodes it, whether he does it as a novelist, a poet, a dramatist with further subdivisions of lyrical, satirical or comical approach and further still: an elegy, a ballad, a sonnet, etc. These organize and connect the message and may be regarded as very general code systems, imposing some choice of elements, and some further restrictions.

метода писателя. Лек­сический состав произведений, характер ассоциативных связей при создании тропов, отношение авторской речи и речи персонажей, способ реализации образа автора — все это рассматривается при таком подходе с целью определения индивидуальных особенностей данного автора1. Стилистика декодирования рассматривает текст, как его видит читатель.
Другое важное для нас разграничение при подходе к художественному тексту — подход исследователя и подход вдумчивого высокообразованного читателя. Исследователь-ли­тературовед добивается глубины проникновения в текст, используя не только то, что содержится в самом тексте, но и специально привлекая широкий дополнительный контекст культуры. Произведение объясняют, пользуясь сведениями о его эпохе и биографии писателя. Поскольку всякое художе­ственное произведение уходит корнями в прошлое, исследо­ватель (не всегда в действительности, но, во всяком случае, в идеале) не замыкается только на условиях ближнего времени. Установив внетекстовые факторы, он сопоставляет их с данными текста. Если далее исследователь в качестве лектора или докладчика передает результаты своего анализа читателя, схема связи получается: автор — текст — интерпретатор — читатель.
Иначе подходит к тексту читатель, если он не является профессиональным литературоведом. Он ориентируется в самом тексте, опираясь на свое знание языка и на структуру самого текста, собственный читательский опыт используется строго применительно к тому, что обнаруживается в тексте. Схема связи: автор — текст — читатель. Задача стилистики, ориентированной на интересы читателя, состоит в том, чтобы в процессе декодирования происходило существенное совер­шенствование в овладении самими кодами.
И.В. Арнольд,
Теоретические основы стилистики декодирования

we read the elements of the text and their connections are gradually perceived, feedback plays a most important role because our response continuously changes, adapting to succeeding events going on as a process of retrospective patterning combined with some expectation for what is coming. The conclusion of a text is the point when the total pattern is revealed. As we read the poem our expectations or the probable further development depend on the interaction of what we read in the text and our thesaurus that is the contents of our memory, and these expectations are constantly readjusted in feedback.

участвуют все уровни языка. Более того, даже текстовое строение, сюжетная и композиционная сторона сигнализируются языковыми средствами.
Следует также обратить внимание на то, что изучение литературного произведения как сложно организованной структуры взаимозависимых элементов требует выяснения соотношений элементов разных уровней. Эстетическая цен­ность текста зависит от того выбора, который автор сделал из имеющегося набора возможностей. Эти возможности, ограничения и нарушения касаются прежде всего естествен­ного языка, на котором написан текст, и всех его уровней, а именно это и составляет предмет «квалифицированного интереса» лингвиста.
И.В. Арнольд,
Теоретические основы стилистики декодирования

the active role of literature in history, and the feedback between art and society. This shows that as given by the Theory of Information the scheme is general and comprehensive. Information Theory does not claim that it can substitute any other particular science or branch of knowledge. Its merit lies in creating a common language that facilitates the contacts between languages; showing some basic universal laws and relationships, it creates a basis for a general approach and permits each science comparing its results with those of the other sciences to find the specific and peculiar features in a clearer and more rigorous way. Thus the general notion of a code that presupposes a system of signs of any nature is particularized in many different branches of knowledge according to their object. For example, biologists study the genetic code.

2.4. Adaptation of Shannon's Model

a code fully or at least partially common to the addresser and the addressee, i.e. to the encoder and the decoder of the massage;
a context that the addressee can recognize, and that is either verbal or capable of being verbalized;
a contact i.e. a physical channel and psychological connection enabling both participants to enter and stay in communication.
It must be emphasized that the definition of a code given above does not presuppose the unchangeability of the system. On the contrary the system of a code may develop adapting itself to the conditions under which it is used. With a literary text even if the poet and his reader speak the same language and are contemporaries there is always some difference in the codes they use, moreover a poet always introduces some innovations by which he mobilizes the reader's attention, his verbal code changes in the interaction with the message.

to Literary Communication

Signal

Signal

Message

Message

Source of noise

information and the addressee may be human beings, while transmitter and receiver are technical devices. In our case it seems more appropriate to take transmitter and receiver as human, i.e. writer and reader respectively, and consider the end items, source and addressee, to be the social reality surrounding them.
The history of literature concentrates its attention on the transmitting end, i.e. it studies what and who influenced the writer. In Decoding Stylistics and Text Interpretation the attention is concentrated on the receiving end of the process of communication, i.e. on decoding the message, hence the term “Decoding Stylistics”.
This last scheme adaptation brings Decoding Stylistics in correspondence with our view of literature as a social phenomenon. It is also an essentially cybernetic view of literature because it shows that literature controls the reader's perception of reality and his activity in real life.

2.4. Adaptation of Shannon's Model

сообщением, в котором эта информация закодирована. Воздействие художественной литературы на читателя можно уподобить кибернетическим процессам, потому что кибернетика занимается изучением управляющих систем, а литература может рассматриваться как управляющая система, которая через свою образно-познавательную функцию управляет восприятием читателя, преобразуя его как личность и формируя общественное сознание.
И.В. Арнольд,
Теоретические основы стилистики декодирования

too?
Can I see another’s grief,
And not seek for kind relief?
Can I see a falling tear,
And not feel my sorrows share?
Can a father see his child,
Weep, nor be with sorrow fill’d?
Can a mother sit and hear,
An infant groan, an infant fear –
No no never can it be
Never never can it be
   /William Blake/