Destruction of Communicative Pragmatics in Contemporary Absurdist Dramaturgic Texts

Abstract

The aim of the article is characteristics of mechanisms of pragmatics distraction in communication of active participants of modern Ukrainian plays with features of the theatre of the absurdity. Structural and contextual mechanisms of dialogic speech depragmatization are singled out on factual material. In a dramatic dialogue absurdity is explained as a purposeful instruction to convey the thought about illogicalness and chaotic nature of reality, the aimlessness of a human being. The main methods of the study are descriptive, context-interpreting and presuppositional.
 Study results. One of absurdity occurrence mechanisms is depragmatization – purposeful non-normative usage of language pragmatic resources. We identify structural and contextual violations within depragmatization. Structural violations are characteristic for an absurdist drama in which characters’ cues do not have illocutionary and thematic coherence. Another type of structural violations is conscious violations of formal structure of linguistic units. Role exchange, during which an active participant takes over someone else’s communicative role, is an example of contextual depragmatization. Within contextual violations we also identify the group of cognitive violations which is based on non-observance of causally consecutive and logical connections. Anomalies based on an arbitrary choice of language stylistic means, which are uncoordinated with general principles of stylistic formalization of the text, are considered the contextual variety of depragmatization.
 Conclusions. Structural and contextual communicative violations are used by playwrights to activate the sense of the situational absurdity depicted in a work. Active participants of drama of the absurdity communicate without communicative purpose and taking into account situational needs, which results in actualization of pragmatic potential of used linguistic units, falsification of meaningful speech.