Аннотация:Painters were first to describe the phenomenon of light reflexes and their ability to change colour of the objects. We are convinced that any text embraces the stylistic reflexes of its context. Research on the audience’s perception of an oratorical text – both written and oral – shows that people often find meanings not implied by the author because these meanings can exist outside of the text itself. Yuri Rozhdestvensky supposed that a newspaper’s style is one of three components that all influence how readers interpret meanings. The Pushkin speech by Dostoevsky can serve as a telling example. Oral and written editions of the text caused completely opposite reactions of the same community. Here we can refer to Eric A. Havelock contemplating on the ‘cultural collision’ between the oral and the written forms. In this study, we will develop this opposition by looking into semiotic characteristics of both forms, and demonstrate a crucial role of stylistic reflexes in decoding the text.