The author’s idiostyle and the use of the linguistic means at the lexical, syntactic and stylistic levels in the novel Ubik Anastasia Melnyk College

Idiostyle is a structurally united and internally related system of means and forms of verbal expression used by a writer, or simply an individual writing style. In linguistics, the concept of idiostyle is associated with a certain choice, the selection of linguistic means (words) and methods of their combination and interaction. Outside of linguistics, idiostyle is also viewed as a system of meanings an author chooses that distinguish him from the others, or his reflection of some images of the objective reality and the nature of their relations appear, i.e. the picture of the world of a certain author. Philip Dick has created his idiostyle mainly basing on his novel Ubik.

Philip Dick's science fiction novel Ubik was published in 1969, with the action taking place in the future, at that time it was 1992. The society described in the novel has reached such a technological development when it became possible with the help of scientific advances to keep in touch with the dead, activating their brain activity in a special ‘cold-pac’ freezer, albeit for a certain time.

In this society, there are people with various paranormal abilities: telepaths, seers, inertial, weakening or neutralizing the supernatural abilities of others;...