Indirect speech act as manipulative means in the context of reframing technology (based on English literary discourse)

Abstract

The article presents the study of an indirect speech act from the point of reframing methodology to reveal the manipulative character of indirect utterances in English literary discourse. This paper proposes an inquiry into the communicative-pragmatic specifics of indirect speech acts in English literary communication. To describe and reveal the manipulative character of indirect speech acts in English literary discourse, a descriptive method was used, which yields a set of procedures for classification and interpretation of the indirect utterance. Indirect speech act is a contextually dependent utterance that requires the usage of methods of distributive, interpretive and contextual analysis in the process of its study. These methods make it possible to explain and detect the nature and strength of illocutionary purpose of indirect speech acts and the binary functions they perform in English literary dialogues. Indirect speech act is generally recognized via conversational implicature, but the article follows the thought of existing an additional illocutionary force in an indirect utterance. An additional illocutionary force extends the indirect speech act’s meaning and functions to actualize the speaker’s communicative intention in verbal interaction. The article aims to give an account of the mechanism of indirect speech acts interpretation due to the context and meaning reframing methodology. It is found out that an indirect speech act is a context dependent inferential act. Micro- and macrocontext are essential for relevant interpretation of an indirect speech act. Lingual and extralingual factors, such as interpersonal relationships between speakers, their status and intentions, type of communicative situations demonstrate a principal role in an indirect speech act comprehension. It has been investigated the correlation of indirect utterance with a context by means of reframing. Context/meaning reframing is considered as a tool for looking at a situation or an utterance from a different perspective, thereby changing the meaning of that communicative situation or an utterance. Changing the meaning of a situation or an utterance will influence the type and character of the illocutionary force of an utterance as well as speakers’ communicative intention in verbal interaction. Reframing methodology allows using indirect speech acts as the efficient means of speech manipulation.