CONTEXTUAL INFERENCE IN ENGLISH LITERARY TITLES: FROM INITIAL EXPECTATION TO RETROSPECTIVE MEANING

The article investigates how the meaning of an English literary title is reorganized while a  reader moves from first contact with the title to a completed interpretation of the work. The study  treats the title not as a static label but as a compact paratextual unit whose semantic potential is  activated gradually by context. A qualitative contextual-pragmatic procedure is applied to three cases drawn from English-language fiction: Ernest Hemingway's In Another Country and Cat in the Rain,  and H. G. Wells's The Invisible Man.