ЛІНГВАЛЬНІ АСПЕКТИ ГІПНОТИЧНОГО ДИСКУРСУ (НА МАТЕРІАЛІ КИТАЙСЬКОЇ ТА АНГЛІЙСЬКОЇ МОВИ)

Abstract

The linguistic features of hypnotic communication in the context of psychotherapy are outlined. This area is topical due to insufficient knowledge in spite of the significant role of the speech component in the process of hypnotic suggestion and, as a result, the interest of researchers in it. The aim of our research is to characterize the phenomenon of hypnotic discourse and dwell on the basic linguistic peculiarities of hypnotic communication. The object of our research is the hypnotic discourse in the Chinese and English languages, the mechanisms of conducting a hypnotic communicative act in these two languages serve as its subject. Recordings of hypnotherapists’ speech during performing hypnosis serve as the material for our study. The article describes various approaches to understanding hypnosis, and also identifies common features in them: 1) a decrease in the degree of awareness of the environment and the intensity of human psychomotor activity, which resembles sleep; 2) this process is the result of the cooperation of a person, who is referred to as a client, with a person who is referred to as a therapist; 3) an increase in the likelihood of successful suggestion. The algorithm of a typical hypnotic session was outlined, namely, it commonly includes such components as induction, suggestion, and termination of the trance. The linguistic patterns used by the hypnotherapist to elicit a hypnotic trance state in the client are analysed in the study. In particular, two groups of such patterns were identified: those that use universal laws for modeling causal relationships (they include such patterns as pseudological connection using conjunctions, implicit causative, explicit causative, and implication of understanding deep cognitive processes), and those that lead to transderivational search (they include generalized reference index and violation of selectional restriction). The analysis and comparison of the English and Chinese material was carried out to identify the peculiarities of the usage of the abovementioned linguistic patterns in each of these two languages.