Organizational structure of British parliamentary discourse: pragmalinguistic aspect

Pavlo Zernetsky,Ganna Riabokon

doi:10.18523/2616-8502.2019.2.20-29

Pavlo Zernetsky, Ganna Riabokon

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.18523/2616-8502.2019.2.20-29

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Abstract

The article investigates the peculiarities of utterance construction in British Parliamentary Discourse from the positions of pragmalinguistics. For the basis of the research, the authors take the classification of speech acts by J. Austin and J. Searle combined with the model for spoken discourse analysis by J. Sinclair and M. Coulthard and apply it for the description of the constituent components of speech moves (Pre-Head, Head, and Post-Head) in speech activity of the main participants of British Parliamentary Debates. The authors define pragmatic intentions of the speakers and describe the models of Speech Moves progressions in terms of Pre-Head, Head, and Post-Head ties, which provides the insight into the way the speakers build the utterances in order to realize their speech intentions. Article received 31.08.2018

Highlights

One of the central aspects of pragmatics study is the realization of communicative intention by the participants of discourse
According to general hierarchical structure where the components of the lower level form those of higher ones, within each Speech Moves (SM) which gives initial understanding of the micro-topic of the discourse, it is possible to distinguish between its immediate constituents consisting of topical and issuing Speech Acts (SA) which make the lowest, smallest and most elementary ranks of discourse
Parliamentary discourse promises much wider scope of exploration in terms of pragmatic senses and semantic meanings and the ways of syntactic and stylistic realizations because the speech exchanges are impromptu, albeit proceed in the frameworks of the discussed topic according to the agenda, and allow the speakers to employ a full range of language and subject thesaurus

Summary

Introduction

One of the central aspects of pragmatics study is the realization of communicative intention by the participants of discourse. At the beginning of its foundation and development, the early pragmalinguistic research tended to concentrate on the construction, purpose, and functioning of isolated utterances (Austin, 1986; Searle, 1986a; Searle, 1986b; Frazer, 1975; Karaban, 1989; Po cheptsov, 1986). Contrary to this approach, but enhanced with the methodology and inventory of that trend, modern pragmalinguistics is based on the analysis of discourse in its coherent and cohesive architectonics, or semiotic continuum (Sinclair, Coulthard, 1992; van Dijk, 1997; Serazhym, 2002). The authors set the tasks to analyze the architectonics of speech activity intrinsic to British Parliament, investigate the compos ition and nature of speech moves, define speech intentions and correlate them with appropriate speech acts, and by means of quantitative analysis determine the frequency of their usage in general picture of discourse

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