COMMUNICATIVE TACTICS MANIFESTING MANIPULATION STRATEGY IN ENGLISH DETECTIVE DISCOURSE

Abstract

The article reports on the communicative strategy of manipulation and the communicative tactics that manifest it. The samples for the analysis have been taken from English detective discourse. The object of the study is the personages’ speech: the detective’s interrogation of witnesses and suspects. The scope of the study is the communicative tactics applied by the police officers to manipulate witnesses and suspects into revealing the truth about the murder. The purpose is cognitive and pragmatic analysis of the communicative tactics applied by the police officers to manipulate the witnesses and suspects. The investigation is based on the general and special linguistic methods: synthesis and analysis, method of observation, descriptive method, pragmatic and linguistic method, cognitive method, analysis of contextual interpretation. The cognitive and pragmatic analysis of the strategic plan of the police officer, the personage of the detective discourse, has resulted in our own classification of communicative tactics and strategies applied by the police officer during the interrogation of witnesses and suspects. It has been established that one of the major communicative strategies used by the police officer is manipulation. Manipulation is realized by the following communicative tactics: provocation, warning, menace, blackmail, persuasion, flattery. Each of these tactics is manifested by certain lexical, morphological and syntactic means of the English language. The perspective for further research is seen in the comprehensive study of the linguistic mechanisms of manipulative impact on the recipient in fiction.