A highly specialized book: the text¬content level of the presentation of information

Abstract

Introduction. A highly specialized book about children’s and gender-specific hygiene is aimed at helping parents solve the challenges of parenthood, giving them qualified recommendations and acquainting them with the recent medical research findings. The book series is therefore of high interest for readers all over the world and in Ukraine in particular. Meanwhile the intensive development of medical sciences and the change in social and pedagogical principles lead to rapid information aging that requires authors and publishers to produce competitive books that contain relevant verbal messages.
Relevance and aim. Despite its popularity among readers, a series of books about children’s and gender-specific hygiene is understudied as an integral object, as a combination of content, graphic and architectonical levels. The aim of our research lies in the dimension of studying the principles of the text-content level of information representation in highly specialized books about children’s and gender-specific hygiene. The research covers the time period from 1991 (Ukraine’s declaration of independence) to the latter half of 2018.
Methods. The general scientific methods of synthesis, analysis and generalization have been used throughout the study of highly specific books and the preparation of the article. Descriptive and comparative methods, content-analysis, as well as the elements of statistical analysis have also been used. The bibliography method has been used. The emotional-lexical analysis has made it possible to determine the emotiogenity of the text.
Results. 488 issues of the bibliographical index «Litopys knyg» of the State scientific institution «Ivan Fedorov book chamber of Ukraine» and catalogues of the leading libraries have been studied within the framework of scientific research. 167 books about age- and gender-specific hygiene by Ukrainian and foreign authors, published within the chronological framework of the research, have been discovered and described. In order to carry out a deep text-content analysis we have selected three publications with the largest circulation: B.Spok – «Dytyna ta dohliad za neiu», Ye. Komarovskyi – «Zdorovye rebenka i zdravyy smysl ego rodstvennikov», E. Fenvik – «Maty i dytyna».
Conclusions. The analysis has revealed that the publications share a common topic and idea, and convey childcare information to parents in an equally concise and full manner. However, the publications differ in their narrative composition, which is to be expected as the authors rely on their personal experience and recent advances in medicine, psychology, pedagogy and other sciences, project their own ideas onto the readers as the basis and organization of the narrative. Accordingly, the combination of common and different features in the principles of the text-content level of information representation is what forms a book into an integral object.