Non-letter characters in writing system. Exclamation mark

The article examines phrases with the exclamation mark in poetic discourse. Perceptual experiment was used to determine the degree of their emotional load. The material for the study was A. A. Block’s poem read by professional performers. The paper discusses a set of reasons that cause different emotional interpretation of the same poetic work and varying intonation patterns employed by the readers. It is argued that the multidimensional and mobile semiosis of poetic discourse, the mismatch of presuppositions and the lack of a common communicative base between the author and the reader account for differences in the actualization of the non-letter symbol additional function in writing. The results of the experiment show high degree of intonation shades variability whose graphic referent is the exclamation mark. The results also indicate the existence of a hierarchy in distributing emotional load, particularly, its increase towards the end of the poem which, in general, corresponds to the strategy of communicative patterns arrangement in the utterance.