To the question on methodology of stylistic stratification in analysis of the Early Modern English dramatic oeuvre (on the example of John Skelton’s play “Magnificence”)
The subject of this research is the methods of differentiation of neutral units and elements of inherent connotation of stylistic plan, which can be applied in stylistic analysis of literary texts of the Early Modern English period. Attention is focused on the peculiarities of general linguistic processes relevant for the early XVI century, as well as sociolinguistic conditionality of establishment of a literary canon. The author examines the specificity of perception of aureate style and unpoetic style as a system of deviations from the forming norm. The article determines the fundamental criteria of identification of stylistically marked units, as well as category of linguistic units revenant for the stylistic analysis, certain common attributes indicating a potential markedness of the word. The work demonstrates an integration algorithm of the data of diachronic corpora at the semantic and metasemiotic stages of the three-level stylistic analysis of a literary text of the Early Modern English period. The scientific novelty lies in the attempt to develop an algorithm that allows verifying or clarifying the stylistic status of linguistic elements in retrospective by applying to interpretation of lexical units of a play of the Early Modern English period the data of corpus-based linguistics and pragmatics. The author refers to the relevant treatises of the XVI century dedicated to the problem of style and corresponding research, systematizing the data for specification of criteria for stylistic stratification.