Agreement and disagreement
 in the light of the theory of speech acts

Abstract

The article examines the place occupied by agreement and disagreement in
 speech activity. The background for solving this urgent problem is the theory of
 speech acts. Examples from Russian fiction and colloquial speech are used as
 factual material. It is shown that the categories of agreement and disagreement
 can act as: a) independent replicas that regulate the development of dialogue
 (such as Russian Da and Net); b) semantic presuppositions that are part of some
 speech acts (approval, surprise, permission, indignation, etc.); c) dominant linguistic and psychological attitudes in the production of the text; d) features that
 characterize the language personality. Combinations of agreement or disagreement with other meanings mask these intentions, and the recipient, in order to
 understand the text correctly, must restore the entire chain of propositions used
 by the speaker. It also describes the situation of neutralization of agreement and
 disagreement, due to either the complexity of the discursive conditions, or the personal qualities of the speaker. The connection of these situations with the
 phenomena of hedging and empathy, which are tuning of interpersonal relations
 in the group, is noted. It is concluded that agreement and disagreement are complex, multi-level communicative categories.